That's supposedly what my headhunter does for me on my behalf (part of how they try to justify their $10 to $25 per hour cut), but I've never seen them do this successfully. It makes no difference to them, they get paid the same either way.
- Companies that hire through recruiters have deep yearly budgets; companies that hire direct have shallow project budgets. I have never not gotten a higher rate through a recruiter.
- Companies that hire through recruiters pay on time; companies that hire direct pay late and usually after repeated prodding; sometimes they don't pay at all.
- Companies that hire through recruiters pay for hours worked; companies that hire direct fight for upfront concessions and then fight some more when the bill comes.
- Most recruiters make a percentage and not a set fee, although yes, it's usually capped at around $25/hour. However that means that you need to be making upward of $100/hour to hit that cap. Which means that for the majority of people, the recruiter does make more when you make more.
All in all I never understood the customary programmer/recruiter animosity. Making more and never having to deal with collections is awesome. In my book, recruiters' cut is well-deserved.
Whenever I work direct for a company, I always make way more (basically, my cut, and the headhunters cut).
Despite this, companies seem to always work through headhunters...I've never seen any manager ask any developer "do you know any good ____ people that might be available?" It's really bizarre.
Of course, their incentive is much smaller than mine, since an initial 2K/month salary boost might translate to 50K in extra salary over my tenure with that company and, conceivably, extra hundreds of thousands over my career.
Because they can increase their total commissions by 20% if they increase their number of employees placed by that much.
But really my take on this is different. If it takes an extra 20% of work, then the hiring company is probably not for me. I'd rather work for companies where good compensation is a given, because they tend to do other things better as well.