tl;dr: While not all recruiters are bad, I was better off just directly applying to companies and avoiding recruiters as much as possible.<p>A couple of months ago, I was interested in what the SF market had to offer, and I started responding to some of the emails coming my way.<p>Over the three month period, I've probably been approached by 3 retained recruiters and 10 contingent recruiters. All the retained recruiters (i.e. internal company recruiters) were thorough, thoughtful, and curated the opportunities to my career goals. Not only did they make sure that I was a qualified for the job, they made sure from the get go that I'm a good cultural fit and the position aligns with my personal goals.<p>Contingent recruiters, on the other hand, rarely asked what I wanted to do. Every single interview that they'd supposedly set up for would fall through, either because they didn't double check the position's needs or that they had communication problems with the hiring company. Additionally, the recruiters' coworkers would call me in the middle of the day several times a week to tell me about some new opportunities. I was still working at the time, and it was annoying to constantly step out of the office to hear nothing substantial. The whole process left me feeling like I was just a piece of meat.<p>In the end, I had a much better experience just getting a list of companies that were hiring from the recruiter and directly applying with the companies I was interested in myself. When the HR asks how I was referred, I'd usually mention the recruiter out of karma. If I were to do it again, I'd probably avoid the recruiters altogether and go directly for the companies I actually care about.