[ericb]

> biased to hiring a slightly worse applicant

I understand your reasoning, but in practicality, I don't think this is true. This would be true if companies though with a coherent set of incentives. Instead, individual incentives are at-play here.

If a company is paying for a recruiter, it usually means:

- It isn't highly cash constrained - Values the time of its IC's, managers and HR more than the fee - Valuation for the role is not cost-based, but value-based - Only at the penny pinching startup stage is the recruiter fee a real factor in a multi-year investment that should be yielding a high return. Beyond that, the bias evaporates and the real incentives lie with individual incentives, and available budgets.