Are third party recruiters, specifically those recruiting for technology positions, a waste of a candidate's time?
Absolutely not, a good recruiter is worth his weight in gold. You just need to find the right recruiter. The vast majority of recruiters are playing the immediate payoff numbers game - they post any old candidate to the reqs they get, and hope they get lucky. Employers (like me) hate these guys and we don't work with them.
When I was working in Fortune 500, I also hated my internal HR dept because they didn't get rewarded for finding me qualified people. Internal recruiting sucks because they never make the effort to understand the hiring manager's problems, and they aren't on commission so they could care less whether they fill my req. That's where recruiting relationships are important - the hiring manager likes them because they refer qualified people. The candidates like them because they find them good jobs.
You're looking for a recruiter who has an exclusive listing with an employer, not these commodity body shops. One way to find them is to actively network in your field and talk to peers. Here's a secondary method on how to find them.
1. Identify a company you want to work for.
2. Find jobs you want on the internal recruiting website.
3. Identify unique phrases in the job posting, then google those exact phrases. Unique abbreviations work well. Take whole sentences out of the posting and google that in quotes.
4. This should give you a list of recruiters who are working these job roles. Look at the dates of the postings to see when they got them - if you see an internal posting a month or three after the internal req was posted, that's a good candidate. Lots of companies post internally and then branch out to recruiters when they don't get any candidates.
4a. If you find the posting and it leads back to one recruiter, that's your guy. If it leads back to 20 different companies, that's not your guy.
5. Call the recruiter and explain what you're looking for. They will likely have lots of other gigs available in other companies.
A good recruiter is honest with you. A way to test this is, once you have a gig identified, to ask them what their margin is if they place you in the role. About half the recruiters I've spoken to will not tell you, and this is where I end the relationship. The honest ones will be happy to tell you what their margin is. A fair margin is around 20% for an hourly gig, or 10% of your first year's salary for immediate placement.
Other features of good recruiters:
* They value the relationship with you and play the long game. Good recruiters call you once a month to see how you're doing, and when you're ready to move again (and generate new commissions for them).
* They provide valuable feedback on end client rate targets and their commissions
I've got a recruiting company I've worked with for 15 years who gets the majority of my business. They've also gotten me gigs when I was looking for work. They've always been honest with me and helped me find tough jobs (part time or telecommute work for example).