Funny timing on this story: I was contacted yesterday at work by a recruiter. He called my cell phone and my typical response is to not answer calls that are not pre-defined contacts at work. The guy then went to my LinkedIn profile, found my company, went to the company website, and then called my office. I gave him an earful about how unprofessional I thought it was for him to be contacting me at my job to recruit for another position and then hung up on him when he tried to backpedal saying he was just looking for referrals. In my experience, recruiters are not only clueless but also rude and shady.

I have personally known a wonderful recruiter and despite my respect for her, I have very little respect for the average recruiter. The profession itself does provide value as it is truly difficult to find good people, but the low signal to noise among recruiters themselves can just as easily make it more difficult to find the right person.