[ska]

I have to disagree with this, from the both sides of the table. If I'm hiring, phone screens let me sanity check the candidate resembles what they present on paper. As an candidate the phone screen lets me sanity check that the position/team resembles what they present in the job posting.

Both of these before either side has expended significant resources on a proper interview. More that 50% of the most recent interviews I have done have involved getting on an airplane (sort of "amusingly", more than once even for a position in the same city I was located) - no way I'm going to put that sort of time in for most places without talking to them first. On the other foot, it's pretty frustrating as a hiring manager to have interviews and people all lined up and prepped for someone it only took you 10 minutes to know was not going to work out.

I should probably add, I mean technical, or at least hiring manager, phone screens. Recruiter can rarely handle this, and if I'm talking to one it's really only to arrange/understand who I really need to be talking to.

[walshemj]

Isn't the sanity checking what you pay a recruiter for

[ska]

Recruiters are most typically useful as a filter. If they can reduce an unmanageable number of candidates to a manageable pile without too many false positives, you are doing well.

In more niche/difficult to match area, good recruiters can be helpful at finding difficult to source candidates, much more so that evaluating them.

Those two skill sets are quite different, most recruiters don't do both well.