I found a recruiter that I stayed with for over a decade - he was my agent. He knew my work history, what I had done and he would get me more money before I even walked in the door. Our deal was simple - he sold the prospective client on how good I was (both as a developer and and employee) and I closed the deal. Every time. We made a lot of money together.
The difference is that he's not a technical recruiter. He's an executive recruiter. He places VPs, CEOs, etc. But he also was with those guys on their rise up as well. So often when I took a position, my boss was someone who had the same guy.
Now, when I am looking to hire someone, who do you think I call?
Tech recruiters - the big companies who just try and grab warm bodies, put them in seats and collect commissions, are a blight on the corporate world. Corporations have gotten it in their head that it's better and easier to use them, and developers who need work have to turn to them to pay the bills. But it doesn't work for exceptional programmers.
Honestly, partially by chance. During the dot-com bust I called every recruiter I could talk to in order to line up my next gig. He was actually an executive recruiter, but because of the boom in tech, he started taking on tech clients. So my advice is to find an executive search recruiter who is looking for bad-ass tech clients. The second part of this equation, which is not chance, is that I was looking for someone I could trust and build a long term relationship with, not just someone to get me a job. I did not expect to find it, but that's how it went down.
