A high quality third party recruiter has different incentives than a real estate agent, because they expect repeat business: Few people buy more than two houses in their life, but having a good relationship with a stable of good developers that change jobs every couple of years leads to a far easier and lucrative job in the long run.
There are plenty of awful recruiters who will undervalue you, send you to gigs that don't fit you and such. But it's precisely how bad the field is that makes being a good recruiter such a strategically smart play. Being the rare recruiter that does their job well lands you top talent, that top talent means you can start asking for higher wages for people than the salary bands posted, which leads to more people coming to see you, because you can actually get higher rates than what someone could if they asked up front.
I often ask recruiters what the salary is for the positions they offer. The right recruiter in my town, who I have a work relationship with, will often talk about a 20/hr premium. When compared to the worst (consulting firms that tell you a rate that has nothing to do with what they'll ask the employer, and will hide this) the difference can be huge. I have worked on the same team with another very comparable coworker, and I was getting paid almost triple! and he is an American, not an H1-B.
There are plenty of awful recruiters who will undervalue you, send you to gigs that don't fit you and such. But it's precisely how bad the field is that makes being a good recruiter such a strategically smart play. Being the rare recruiter that does their job well lands you top talent, that top talent means you can start asking for higher wages for people than the salary bands posted, which leads to more people coming to see you, because you can actually get higher rates than what someone could if they asked up front.
I often ask recruiters what the salary is for the positions they offer. The right recruiter in my town, who I have a work relationship with, will often talk about a 20/hr premium. When compared to the worst (consulting firms that tell you a rate that has nothing to do with what they'll ask the employer, and will hide this) the difference can be huge. I have worked on the same team with another very comparable coworker, and I was getting paid almost triple! and he is an American, not an H1-B.