[gav]

> use neutral tools like email

Email might be a neutral tool, but not using a tool like LinkedIn is worse because you're restricting your hiring pool to immediate connections. For all its warts, LinkedIn allows job seekers to connect with a wider range of jobs and job posters to connect to a wider range of potential candidates.

The answer isn't to double down on a "it's not what you know but who you know" world.

Most outside recruiters are terrible, we can agree on that. It's a two-fold problem, they give you poor candidates and harm the reputation of your firm by leaving a poor impression of you to them. I'm looking for work right now and had first hand experience of this recently; I don't know if I should feel sad that I didn't get a job that sounded perfect or happy that I dodged a bullet because if the candidate experience was so bad, what would working there be like?