[badpun]

> I've had my fair share of useless, self interested recruitment firm representatives who enrich themselves at up to 20% of my six figure salary and literally offer me and my employer nothing.

If they truly offered nobody nothing, they wouldn't exist. What they offer is convenience - to the hiring manager. He can just ring a couple of recruiters and have a bunch of people to interview in a couple of days. In theory, the company's HR should provide this service to him instead, but some companies are too small to have HR, and many companies' HR is incompetent or dysfunctional and will not find the right match for the job.

Yes, the ~20% they charge on an ongoing basis is a lot for this service, but the hiring manager does not care, as long as he has money in the budget. So, you could say recruiters take advantage of the managerial class not really working to benefit the owners of the company, and being very loose with their money. They found a way to exploit a weakness of the corporate structure, like many other corporate vendors do - big and small, from mom'n'pop stores which deliver vegetable baskets, to your Microsofts and Googles.