The top tier is paid by the employer to recruit whether or not someone is hired.
The middle tier has a contract with the employer that pays them when one of their recruits is hired.
The bottom tier has no contract and hopes that they can convince the candidate to apply and the employer to pay if the candidate is hired.
Most recruiters in the world bigger than tech are the bottom tier.
All they need is a computer with a browser and a telephone.
Their economics make extreme longshots attractive...shotgun jobs, shotgun candidates, spam emails and maybe something hits a payday.
Everyone else is contingent. The difference is whether or not there is a contract with the employer before the recruiter talks to candidates.
On the first party and retained side, contracted recruiters have less incentive to jerk a candidate around because their relationship with the candidate potentially extends beyond a single employer. A first party recruiter is more likely to tire kick candidates for roles that don’t exist.
You don't even need to set up a new domain/forwarding. Just use an email forwarding service like firefox relay.
The part of "Who wants to be hired" that is worthwhile is when employees of the company (hiring managers or executives) reach out.
I got a response from one saying “your JavaScript skills are impressive, the company is using Java and PHP” despite never having included JavaScript on my profile (although I guess full stack developer is a bit of a giveaway). I have no issue telling these recruiters to f—- off.
You basically use it to generate a persistent throw-away email (aka proxy) that forwards to your real email, and then you just use the proxy email on open web communities like HN. Once you start getting spam, you can just deactivate the proxy and/or create a new one.
To be honest almost any system that allows "free messaging" will result in spam, be it standard-spam, or recruiter spam.
jokes on them, i have no experience with React