LOL no battle here. That's a correct assumption- there is indeed usually a problem with corporate recruiters.

There are usually three types of corporate recruiters that share the same fallacy of not knowing a good candidate when they see one:

1. College Recruiters
2. Internal Recruiters
3. External Recruiters/Agencies

College recruiters are looking for recent grads at colleges, which are usually only good for certain non-critical things as they usually lack experience. You can get good coders from this bunch. Operational people? Project Managers? Execs? Service Managers? Product Managers? No way. A lot of dreams in this bunch. A very small percentage of capable candidates comes from that lot. They usually need a few years of being made and molded in the trenches before they can really be counted on in a production environment. College recruiters also look for stuff that doesn't matter once you get into the real world, like GPA, Honors, what school you went to, etc. etc... all means nothing when you are staring at a billion dollar budget and a real time-frame in which to deliver, and to even mention that kind of thing- GPA, honors, etc. in the workplace is interpreted as arrogant. Most people don't even hang their parchment up in their offices or cubicles.

Internal recruiters have a quota to fill, and are more HR-focused than anything. They are looking for good grammar, competitor's companies, a great resume format-wise, having a degree from an accredited university (doesn't matter which one), and keyword matches. They are just trying to compare the job description and requirements on the requisition with the resumes the best that they can. But they usually don't know what they are looking at on a detailed, thorough level.

External recruiters also do keyword searches, but they are making commissions of between 10% and 50% of the yearly salary of each person that gets hired. So, on a 95,000/year systems engineer, that's $9500 to $47,500 in commission (usually around 10. I've seen 50 though) that the recruiter gets. That's real money for ONE placement. So, they sometimes DO know what they are talking about, and will "coach" a soft candidate into what they want them to be, hoping that they get hired and stick around for at least a couple months, so that they get paid. That is a serious trap that you have to be very careful of. In order to avoid it, you have to ask "situational" questions in the interview, not just canned, typical stuff and a few technical questions.

Also, there are a LOT of resume services in the states that will make your resume as perfect as it can be for about $150. This includes interview practice, interview response coaching, resume formatting and re-write, etc. This can polish up a candidate enough to get them past most recruiters.

But then they have to show up and put up, or shut up, and that's where it gets interesting.

All three search through virtual stacks of resumes, and they go off of keyword and phrase searches. It's rare that large firms actually handle paper resumes- the volume is just too great. It's usually done electronically through systems like Taleo or through custom Lotus Notes apps. It is usually the same recruitment process for internal or external candidates (not to be confused with internal vs external recruiters).

The "recruiters" search through these massive resume databases, usually not being able to tell who is a good potential candidate. And remember, the examples I gave weren't people who were not qualified ON PAPER, but fell apart in the interview.

So as a hiring manager you get a stack of resumes that look great, and you have to bring people in and see if they really measure up in the short time that you have with them. Sometimes you get a resume that keeps showing up in the process, even after you deny it, and has a note from an exec that says "I want this person, make it happen" at which point, you know what you must do. At least the first 90 days are "probationary", and also many hires come from temp-to-perm arrangements, allowing a person to "try-before-they-buy". And lastly, it's all at-will employment, so if you had to, you could manage someone out- and that's another thread altogether.

Best,

Hill