[McSwag]

I understand the temptation to comment on the character of OP (against HN guidelines) but we don’t know anything about OP and should assume good faith and it’s entirely possible OP is new to the field. At face value, OP might think the right thing to do is “report it.” I have trust in the system that at worst, whoever they report it to will just say “ok, thanks for reporting” and the world simply shrugs and moves on.

[superchroma]

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. Pre-qualification always consisted of 5 minutes in a coffee shop. They hold on to my police clearance (which I had to pay for) and my medical results, and won't let me have them. They offer no services, or maybe repackage a third party salary packaging company's product if you're lucky.

Literally the only benefit that I have gotten is to be paid on a weekly pay cycle instead of monthly one, which is a dubious benefit to be honest, anyway.

They've sent me to job interviews for skills I don't have, lied to clients about me and wasted everyone's time.

This is a horrible rent-seeking class of no-good people and they shouldn't exist. They should have honest jobs and work for a living like many other humans have no choice but to do.

I've seen plenty of contracted people from such firms be let go due to incompetence, to boot. These people are useless.

I'm not going to beat around the bush on this I'm afraid.

[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.