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Sounds like you are new to the scene. Recruiting has changed so much from 2000. In 2000's, many companies valued recruiters: they had recruiters working for the company on 1099. They used to hire best candidates as recruiters too. Caspean networks paid like $200K on 1099 to my buddy, who worked as their recruiter; they even paid for his hotel, cars, etc when he travelled to best college/technology towns: like NC, Toronto, etc.

See how linkedin has changed the recruitment and the role of headhunters: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242445

I have been doing contracting for last 7 years or so. The way I look at recruites now has changed: nowadays, recruiters need to get paid their commission or fill their quota; so, they need to find at least 4 prospects for the hiring manager. So, they don't care as long as one of them gets hired. Since they don't maintain long term relatoinship with candidates, they don't know where the prospect stands.

So, just treat them recruiters like car salesman: you don't need to be disrespectful of their profession. They need to make a living like we do. Recruiters (car salesman) are not the problem; but the industry (recruiting or selling cars) is the problem.

I worked as a salesman for two years; I know how difficult it is: commission, base pay, selling warranties, targets, etc. I was lucky to get out of that shitty sales job; many don't have that option any more. After all, becoming an internal recruiter is better for many new graduates than working for Enterprise car rental at their counters.

As I understand it, the problem is this:

Joe Random Recruiter can decide one day that he is a recruiter for Google/Twitter/FB/anyone else. He doesn't need or obtain their permission - he just starts firing out emails to everyone he can find on i.e., LinkedIn.

The email says something like: "My client, {Google, Facebook, etc}, is looking for someone with {one of your skills}. Are you interested?"

If you reply yes, he then sends an email to {Google, Facebook, etc} and says:

"I'm representing an engineer with {your skills} at {outrageous price including fat commission}. Are you interested?"

Assuming they are in fact interested in you (which they likely are), Google/Facebook/etc is now in a tough position.

- Google/FB/etc can say YES, pay the fat commission to the recruiter, and give you the job. You think the recruiter is a gift from heaven.

- Google/FB/etc can say NO, and the recruiter will just tell you they flaked, the opportunity disappeared, or just never contact you again.

The twist is that if Google/FB/etc says NO, the you will end up with a bad impression of THEM, not Joe Random Recruiter. They don't even know your name, with which they could reach out and explain.

Google/FB/etc know this, and as an engineer you are (currently) so valuable that they are (currently) forced to play ball.

And unfortunately, since this method actually works, we see more "recruiters" popping up every day. Even worse, the bad ones are the most aggresive, and they drown out the honest players.

My advice to the Googles/FBs/Twitters of the world: make a page listing the firms you DO work with, just as you list the IP ranges of your crawlers. Not a great idea, but its all I've come up with.

My advice to the job seekers of this world: cut them some slack - you probably didn't ever actually talk to Google/Facebook/etc, or at least they were misinformed about you.

This is definitely a problem, and in the case of Amazon that's likely what happened, as the individual I dealt with is part of a third-party recruiting firm. In the case of Google, however, the recruiter has an @google.com email, so I'd say he's actually employed by them and it really does reflect poorly on them.

You seem to have a good grasp on this, so I'll ask you: why are things set up such that recruiters are "Joe Random Recruiter" to me, rather than "Joe, who I have met, worked with across multiple job switches, and who relies on my trust"?

There are recruiters out there that fall into the later category. lookahead.com.au is a great example of a company that doesn't spam, doesn't pressure and doesn't lie.

I've known the founder of the company for about 5 years now and he is well respected within the communities he operates in (Ruby on Rails, iOS, DevOps, etc)

Perhaps a reputation system for recruiters, i.e., an Angie's List for recruiters, could help here? That could be a useful service.

Its a tough market to serve because the most people don't change jobs more than a couple times in their career.

Whenever you have a good interaction with a recruiter, tell them that, and tell them that you'd like to build a relationship and contact them every time you begin a job search. The good ones will be receptive.

I think it is common for agencies to have Non Compete clauses such that if your favorite recruiter goes someplace else, they aren't allowed to represent you for a certain period.

One big reason: turnover rate. For recruiters it's about 70% first year, and ~90% by second year. Most jobs are contract and not many people survive agencies. Internal jobs are more stable so turnover rates are likely a lot lower.

There are people that stay in contact throughout multiple switches, but it's pretty rare. Staying in touch after getting you multiple jobs presumes they are likely in agency and that they still work on the same type of roles. Agency turnover is high so they might not even be in recruiting after the first year. Then also take myself, I worked on varying roles from finance, healthcare, mech eng, swe, ml, pm, and more all in the last 2 years. Chances of me working the exact type of role I got you into a year later is unlikely.

> The twist is that if Google/FB/etc says NO, the you will end up with a bad impression of THEM, not Joe Random Recruiter.

I can't imagine getting a bad impression of Google from what a random recruiter tells me.

What if the recruiter tells you that Google/FB/etc reviewed your resume and you didn't make the cut? (When in actuality they just don't want to pay the commission)

You wouldn't dislike them, but you might then not apply for a job there (thinking you had already been turned down once), and then Google/FB/etc misses out on any chance to hire you.

I'm just astounded that these folks treat people with such contempt, given that it reflects poorly on them and the business they're associated with

They'll stop doing it, when candidates stop beating down their door to get in. That I suspect if what's really behind self-driving cars and the like. No-one would put up with being dicked around by their recruiters if they knew that 99% of Google staff working on displaying, billing for, and reporting on ads.

Actually, most Googlers work on creating ad-inventory, ie gmail, blogger, G+ etc. Only a small fraction work on the ads technology itself.

I see what you are saying though, most of that isn't shiny.

I'm glad to see some people having the same experience. It's really hard to explain to people as a problem.

"You mean you're mad because people are trying to get you a job?" "Yeah, but..."

I really appreciated the people who did listen and sign up though - it feels really good when they do listen to you when you state the best way to contact you. Recruiters take note!

The best way I've found to explain this is to emphasize that to a recruiter, I am the product. The recruiter is trying to get me a job, just like a car salesman is trying to get a car a driver. Of course, there are good recruiters (and good car salesmen) that are truly interested in finding the best match for both parties, but at the core of the relationship the employer is the one paying the finder's fee.

That being said, the best recruiters take the long view, and realize that their career depends on maintaining relationships and growing their reputation. If they become known as someone who simply puts butts in chairs, they won't get very far. However, if they develop a reputation as someone who really is looking out for everyone's interests, their words will carry more weight with their customers, and they'll have the best product to sell.

So do you think this approach would make good recruiter better? It seems like it would. You would encourage the recruiter to maintain a long term relationship with you, and hopefully they'd respect your boundaries and only reach out when they have a prospect that is too good to pass up.

I interviewed with Twitter a while back. One phone screener never called and then there was a remote coding test where my contact never contacted me, not once but twice. That was enough of that.

I did a whole demo app in Backbone for Twitter, burned a lot of overtime hours for a couple of weeks. On the way to my interview, they said nevermind, they'd hired someone else. They did go ahead and interview me, for another position I wasn't interested in, and those guys had no interest in my demo app.

Some are worse than others, but that guy sounds particularly bad.

seems to be the spec recruiters that the big SV players use.

I have only had 2 bad experiences with recruiters one was just a dick about salary disclosure (whom I fired and put his agency on my personal black list) and one totally misrepresented me to the client.

Having your recruiters behave badly doesn't really help the company brand.

I really hate the guys that insist on "getting a number" right off the bat before they'll even consider opening the door for you. Then there's the ones who offer "benefits" so you should be perfectly happy with $40/hr. Most of them don't even have a direct line to the hiring manager and are slaves to the fickle ATSs. There's no point in talking money if there is no chance of ever having a technical discussion with a human being in the company. When I point this out I often get the apologetic spiel about how they understand but that's the way this company works. It just tells me that this company is only willing to offer 50th percentile pay for 50th percentile workers while demanding a 90th percentile skillset. A bullet I'm happy to dodge.