At least in the US, the whole recruiting industry hit its nadir during the dot-com bubble of 2000.  I remember getting a cold-call from a recruiter, &quot;Hey, got a great gig at a soon-to-IPO startup for a Solaris and Linux guru&quot;, &quot;No thanks&quot;, hang up, the phone next to me rings, same dude, literally just dialing up the extension tree.<p>My boss at the time had a strategy where whenever a recruiter called offering &quot;top notch&quot; development talent, he would demand that he only wanted people with &gt;15 years of java experience (remember, this was in 2000, and we also weren&#x27;t a java shop).  If they said, &quot;Absolutely, no problem&quot;, they went on the banned list.  Most recruiters failed this test.<p>The whole market was so frothy, I remember people who went from being bartenders to high-end tech recruiters making crazy money and doing coke with their clients in the bars they used to work at...and then back to bartending when the bubble burst.<p>Today, I feel like it&#x27;s settled into an annoying-but-manageable background noise.  I still get random recruiter reachouts, &quot;Hey, I have an immediate opportunity for a contract Oracle DBA in illinois at $20&#x2F;hour, interested?&quot; (no, of course), but at least it&#x27;s easy enough to hang up on them.