[watmough]

So are you suggesting that for their $70k, the recruiters would have actually succeeded in screening out the idiots?

From my 15 years in IT, I highly highly doubt it. There is the occasional decent recruiter, but most of them are like realtors, only interested in commission $$$, not entirely unreasonable in itself, but unlikely to be aligned with anyone else's interests.

[goatforce5]

Worked for a well-funded high-profile company years ago. The HR people were constantly getting calls from recruiters who wanted to work for us.

HR person would say "Thanks for calling! We're having a really hard time finding Black Box developers. Can you get me some Black Box developers?"

The only way to be considered by the company was to answer along the lines of "Black Box? Never heard of that."

Many recruiters utterly failed to proceed any further than this point.