> I stopped seeing these in-mails as noise in my inbox and started making the effort to reply to all recruiter in-mails, even for positions I was not interested in. By doing this, I succeeded in building a network of recruiters that have become a rich resource if I have to switch roles in the future.
Recruiters are not your friends who'll help you out in time of need. My experience is that they don't even look at your profile unless you reply.
I'd wager a bet (and this is only my personal opinion) that if you lose your job for whatever reason, this will be a red flag to most of such "network" and when you need another job, they'll avoid you like the plague. An addendum to this wager would be that if you get hired by some high-prestige company (think Microsoft, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, ...), they'll swarm you trying to poach you for whatever you have open (so exactly when you don't need them).
Of course recruiters will help you in your time of need. If you need a job and they have a client with a matching opening , they will submit your resume and try their best to get you hired. That’s how they get paid.
In my experience they treat you the same and forward you to the companies they have at hands. Challenge here is that recruiters only work with a handful of companies that may or may not be hiring at that point in time (often they just want to collect resume from recruiters) so it's a crapshot.
It's mixed. Being laid off means you're available immediately and won't be too picky (unlike interviewing working people at well known companies), so it's good for the recruiter and the company, but there is a stigma with not having a job.
IME recruiters don’t really care if software developers lost their job. It makes sense since they are judged by their ability to source candidates and get them to accept offers.
Recruiters are not your friends who'll help you out in time of need. My experience is that they don't even look at your profile unless you reply.
I'd wager a bet (and this is only my personal opinion) that if you lose your job for whatever reason, this will be a red flag to most of such "network" and when you need another job, they'll avoid you like the plague. An addendum to this wager would be that if you get hired by some high-prestige company (think Microsoft, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, ...), they'll swarm you trying to poach you for whatever you have open (so exactly when you don't need them).