Even though I work for a recruiting company (as a developer, not as a recruiter), I found Mike Taber's posts about his experiences with recruiters to be hilarious..
He proceeded to tell me about all the great people he had, and how he just wanted a chance to prove himself and what he could do.
Me: "Are you a developer?"
Him: "No."
Me: "Have you ever written software or developed code before?"
Him: "No, but I've got some great people who have and are looking for jobs."
Now how in the hell do you expect to be able to tell me who is and isn't a good developer?
And this is just priceless...
I told him that he had wasted plenty of my time and I was simply tired of it, so what I was going to do was send him a contract and start charging him by the minute for my time at my consulting rates. I asked for his fax number so I could send him the paperwork and immediately he backpedaled.
Mike's runs a small software dev shop, and he's looking for developers, not programmers. I don't blame him.
While we're on the subject, I'm reminded me of how on the new Joel on Software Job Board deals with recruiting companies. In order to post a job listing, the actual company name is required. Here's the explanation from the FAQ...
Why is the company name required?
The best job seekers have a choice of where to work, and the hiring company (or institution) makes a big difference in their decision. They are tired of looking at endless anonymous job listings with no identifying information about the actual place where they would be working, and they won't apply for those jobs.
Though recruiting is very helpful in a LOT of situations, it seems like it's not a fit in these cases -- Rockstar developer looking for a job, or for the small-biz looking for a rockstar...