A huge network for a recruiter is not weak. That is his bread and butter. Often, a valuable interaction with a recruiter is very brief: he found you a job. Similar for people in Sales, Business development, Consultant, ...<p>The problem is that the connection feature in LinkedIn covers 2 vastly different use case. What is regular for you ( and me ), a network of people we have worked with and developed a relationship and that overlap your competences in some fashion and eventually become an implicit reference for what you put in your resume. What is regular for recruiter is a network of customer to which you have provided services. You will look at  a recruiter connection to double check if he is indeed in contact with all the major investment banks as he pretend, not to double check he indeed worked at company X on project Y in the past.<p>The weighting should be almost the opposite for a recruiter. If he has worked 5 year in HR in a company 10 years ago, those connections are less interesting that the one he has made in his current position.<p>Problem is that all the use case are treated the same in linked in and most people mix and match different type of contacts in their connection.