Recruiters serve a necessary purpose, and it's not the "middleman" role because that's not necessary at all. Their purpose is something else, and I'll explain.
When you join a company, your manager is an advocate for the company's interests. Plenty of managers are decent people and look out for their employees as much as they can, but it's not their job. Their job is to serve the interests of the company. The employee has to be his own lawyer when it comes to negotiating raises and better projects, because no one else is assigned to that role and if the employee doesn't do it, no one will.
Recruiters, when they work well, serve as talent advocates. They help employees use the only bit of leverage (the right to find another job) that they have as best they can by getting them promotions, raises, and better projects at the rate at which they become qualified rather than the much slower rate that companies consider politically convenient.
There are a few problems with this system. One is that the recruiter is paid by the company, not the employee. That's actually a fairly small one, but it does mean that some recruiters will oversell bad positions in order to make quick cash. The second, related, problem is that they're paid for "churn". Most employees would rather get better work at the same company than change companies, but recruiters only get a payout in the latter case. There's no incentive for a recruiter to work toward internal re-placement, and most companies' transfer policies are so broken that the easiest way to get a better job is to change companies. The third problem is that repeated job moves, after a certain threshold, can damage the employee's resume: the "job hopper" stigma. Some recruiters warn people that there are long-term risks of high-frequency job changing (even though there shouldn't be; the "job hopper" stigma was invented to exploit people) but many don't.
There's a legitimate niche yet to be filled for "talent advocates", who can help the most talented people negotiate a fair shake (without necessarily requiring they change jobs in order to do so). The problem is that talent doesn't have any fucking money to finance this sort of thing. Companies have the money, so they make the rules.
When you join a company, your manager is an advocate for the company's interests. Plenty of managers are decent people and look out for their employees as much as they can, but it's not their job. Their job is to serve the interests of the company. The employee has to be his own lawyer when it comes to negotiating raises and better projects, because no one else is assigned to that role and if the employee doesn't do it, no one will.
Recruiters, when they work well, serve as talent advocates. They help employees use the only bit of leverage (the right to find another job) that they have as best they can by getting them promotions, raises, and better projects at the rate at which they become qualified rather than the much slower rate that companies consider politically convenient.
There are a few problems with this system. One is that the recruiter is paid by the company, not the employee. That's actually a fairly small one, but it does mean that some recruiters will oversell bad positions in order to make quick cash. The second, related, problem is that they're paid for "churn". Most employees would rather get better work at the same company than change companies, but recruiters only get a payout in the latter case. There's no incentive for a recruiter to work toward internal re-placement, and most companies' transfer policies are so broken that the easiest way to get a better job is to change companies. The third problem is that repeated job moves, after a certain threshold, can damage the employee's resume: the "job hopper" stigma. Some recruiters warn people that there are long-term risks of high-frequency job changing (even though there shouldn't be; the "job hopper" stigma was invented to exploit people) but many don't.
There's a legitimate niche yet to be filled for "talent advocates", who can help the most talented people negotiate a fair shake (without necessarily requiring they change jobs in order to do so). The problem is that talent doesn't have any fucking money to finance this sort of thing. Companies have the money, so they make the rules.