I would say they mostly suck. Very slimy, unwilling to divulge basic information and will ghost you in a heartbeat.
Those most likely operating out of the same boiler rooms as tech support scammers who have pitch terrible roles and employ a spray & pray approach where it's just a spam campaign with very little effort on their side. Those are a waste of time, the roles are terrible and are pretty much never matched to your profile, and when you go through anyway the recruiter will not provide any value (I had one insist on me writing a short resume of my profile... I mean you have my resume in front of you, why don't you do it?).
The rest which are typically alright. Again, quality varies, but I haven't had any outright "bad" experiences with any of this category. On the top-end of this category are those that understand the industry very well and what you're looking for and will only pitch you the right roles at the right time. The right recruiters can essentially be your sales team and are absolutely worth having on your side.
I suspect most people's interactions here would be exclusively those from the first category as they're the ones that typically send unsolicited spam. The second category will typically show much more restraint in reaching out out of the blue, so unless you explicitly seek them out you may not even be aware they exist.
A very small percentage of third party recruiters stay third party once they have a year or two of experience. If they are any good but don't love sales they go internal (recruiter for an actual company - less pay but far far less stress).
A tiny percentage of recruiters stay as third party recruiters and are actually good. They often built networks from their early inmail spam days when they did get lucky and place someone so they don't send as many inmails now.
You are almost always dealing with near entry level third party recruiters who are learning on the job. That is in large part why dealing with recruiters on average sucks.
This is never going to change but if you are looking for a new job or you are interested in a role a recruiter reaches out to you about you can absolutely ask to speak to a lead or a manager of their team instead of them.
"Hey I know the third party recruiting industry is tough. I am very interested in this position. Do you have a lead or a manager who I can speak with to learn more about this position and how to prepare for the interview?" That is how you get to the person who actually knows what they are doing. The immediate recruiter might make a stink but their manager likely wont. If you are actually a good fit for the job your chances of landing there do go up if they spend time to speak with you and help you prepare. They only get paid if you actually start there.
I guess I would just throw a few names out there and let you build from there. Disclaimer: I haven't worked with them enough to say they are truly exceptional, but at least they're not from the first category and actually have decent roles:
* La Fosse Associates
* Opus Recruitment Solutions
* Austin Fraser
* Gathered and Found (never heard of this one but got recommended it by someone just now)
Connect with a few people from each, have a few calls and go from there.
*While I have met some downright bad recruiters in my time, I have also met some really great ones, so if anyone wants a connection to one LMK!
That said, I feel that recruiters work harder the farther along you are in your career. They make more as a percentage and they realized that experienced candidates likely have a larger network and will send them more referrals. It's a sales business, they're not stupid.
Thanks recruiters you are mostly awesome!
If they work for a (recruitment) company, I'll look at vacancies on their web site. If I don't like them, I'll either tell them why (if I feel like they may be of use later), give them an annoyed reply (if they annoyed me) or ignore them.
Sometimes, I literally tell them to either give me more info up front, because I can't keep having phone calls just so you can tell me you have 10 vacancies that I might be a good fit. I'd be on the phone talking about Java jobs all day long (I don't have any Java experience). If they don't send me more info, that's fine. If they do, I'll give them some feedback and possibly schedule a call if I like it.
In short, this means I ignore most recruiters and the ones I've spoken to have mostly been pretty pleasant.
99% of the time a "recruiter" contacts me, it's a sweatshop spam recruiter who invariably says "Your profile looks interesting" and of course, has not seen the profile.
In my experience on both ends, they don't care about good fit nor qualifications. It's a numbers game - throw almost any candidate at a position to hope it gets filled, or contact as many devs as possible to make them a client.
Recruiters that are actually part of the company tend to be better in my experience. I won't even talk to 3rd party recruiters.
When the recruiters treated me well, so did the company. When the recruiters or HR treat me poorly (e.g. after the offer was signed, the nature of my remote work & travel was trifled over with little guilt trips), the company inevitably ended up being what was being reflected.