Companies use recruiters mostly because they feel they have no skills to perform hiring themselves, when they have no HR staff etc. Most of them are unaware that recruiters actually make quality hiring nearly impossible, through ignorance, misrepresentation of facts or open lies.<p>Companies seem not to know that developers generally avoid recruiters and seek a direct contact. I had it many times that recruiters ruined potential opportunities for me as a candidate, that is why I said them goodbye a long time ago.<p>With the way recruiters approach their work today, I'm convinced they have no place in the IT hiring process and actually do more harm than good. They have no qualifications to perform their job well and none seem to be even remotely interested in obtaining the necessary knowledge. Recruiting seems to be a short term job - today they hire programmers, tomorrow they end up in the sales department of a manufacturing company and will be selling tires, the day after that they'll be doing something else. It probably makes no sense to them to be wasting time learning something weird when they can spend this time cold-calling and selling whatever stuff they're on today.<p>Update. Almost forgot. Sometimes people go to recruiters to relieve themselves of the responsibilities for a potential bad hire. Employing the services of a staffing company will make the person look like acting in the best interests of the company, and if a bad hire happens here, it can easily be attributed to the failure of the staffing company, not to the mistakes of the person who hired recruiters.
> I know hiring is not an easy task but why do companies use recruitment agencies where these guys have no idea about programming/IT?<p>Because most view the time of people who <i>do</i> know something about programming/IT as too valuable to use on the early phase of hiring, so if they weren't doing that, they'd be using in-house HR staff that <i>also</i> have no idea about programming/IT for the role for which they use recruiting companies.<p>Also, because the recruiters know enough about <i>management</i> of programming/IT companies to be able to sell themselves as knowledgeable about the industry to management.
Full disclosure: I do staffing, but I'm also a 20-year software developer and 15 year manager, so I'm an outlier. Assuming you're talking about regular staffing companies, but here are some general reasons.<p>When you're hiring, you're often too busy do recruit yourself. What can hinder your chances further is believing you don't have time to educate the recruiters you've hired, and I've seen that, too. Of course, you may believe that spending time with a typical recruiter will not help your cause.<p>You may not have a good network, either. Whether the typical recruiter has a meaningful network depends on them, but it doesn't happen overnight. Most recruiters are very friendly and extroverted, so at least face to face it's a pleasant interaction.<p>You may be poor at marketing your company/open position to developers. This I see a lot, in the same way I see great developers who don't market themselves well. I recently came across a job description where the first three paragraphs were about the company and the parent company - a very big name! Even at the hiring company, there can be a disconnect about what developers care about.<p>Finally, there are a lot of good developers who have no problem with recruiters. What prompted me to enter staffing was the number and quality of developers who came to me for help with their job searches, but I wasn't in a great position to help. Truth is, job searches suck and if you can find someone trustworthy to help with that, it's a relief.
You can get specialised recruitment agencies and I came across a few in London who focus on one area. Head hunters will use all means necessary to get details from a department of the type of people working there. They then do build up a network of people outside LinkedIn or Monster that do have relevant experience inside a specific sector. Then by employing that agency you are more likely to get the kind of candidate you're searching for.<p>But this only works for specialised agencies all the rest is an absolute nonsense.<p>One of the companies I worked for went through various agencies but also put their own ad in the Guardian UK newspaper just because the CTO happened read that newspaper. That's where I came across their job through internet searches.<p>I guess it's just a way of getting 'some' candidates in the hope that you'll find a polished turd in the cess pool. Or perhaps it's to make the good candidates feel like they're not the only one being interviewed.
Recruiters can give you a pipeline of candidates, pretty much immediately. As head of your team you can then spend your time sifting through resumes and interviewing instead of trying to do everything yourself. This works best when you can write a good description, and discuss your needs with the recruiter. Most companies will use a few different agencies as they find which ones bring in better candidates.<p>Recruiting companies vary in competency. There are senior-level recruiters that are former engineers. If you get one, keep him or her. There are experienced recruiters that can roughly gauge whether you would be a good fit. Then there are pure sales types where you're just a product. All can be successful. All will have different types of networks and work with different companies.
Sometimes you need an outside Hired Gun--<p>Whether it's an Attorney, Accountant, Advertising/PR, Management Consulting, or some moron Recruiter. All of these experts will undoubtedly claim to have specific industry experience in the clients space. "Hey we get you!"<p>As with any 'profession' the good ones know just enough to be dangerous, deliver a modicum of value, and some even make a nice living.
Because these days joining a IT startup is like joining a gang, this gang or that gang, they all require you to believe them, breathe them, live with them.<p>Recruitment agencies dilute that bad influence as the firm's boss knows after all this is a corporation not a church.