I am a dev in Dallas and I am constantly inundated w/ recruiters to the point of annoyance. Based on my friends' anecdotal management/employer-side stories across several Dallas companies, it is definitely an employee market right now. Many companies are paying hefty salaries/bonuses to move people in from out of state.
During my unemployment spell in 2010-2012, I got lots of recruiters talking to me, and I even had some interviews come out of that.
Guess what? The employers were pickier than the recruiters.
I've learned to deeply distrust recruiters: they are known to make up lie after lie just to throw as many names in front of an employer as possible on the off chance one of us gets hired so they can grab their commission. They'll ask employers to interview blatantly incompetent candidates (including myself: I was absolutely not competent for some of the positions recruiters tried to get me) just because they're that desperate.
Then, when I was looking for a new job in 2014 (employed, but unhappy at my then-current position), I got innundated with so many recruiters lobbing utter shit at me. This time, I could afford to be picky, and I wasn't afraid to say to some of the shadier ones, "never contact me again". I had multiple recruiters try to offer me a six-month contract in another state, despite my profile on every job site saying both "unwilling to relocate" and "full-time only, no contracts". I had recruiters try to get me positions that required twice the amount of experience I had in technologies I've never touched. I had one recruiter repeatedly send me calls and emails for a position I explicitly told them I wanted no part of the first time he contacted me, and he didn't stop until I sent an email saying "please cease and desist from contacting me again, or I will take legal action against both you and your firm" (I should've also called his firm's HR department, but c'est la vie...).
Oh, and now that I'm happily employed at my current employer, I still get frequent calls from recruiters. I legally changed my name (first, middle, and last) in June 2014, but most of the recruiters calling me ask for me by my old name, and I'm at a point in my life where even hearing my old name causes me emotional distress.
In short: recruiters are sleazy, and being contacted by recruiters has no bearing on whether or not you'll actually get a job.
There are different types of recruiters. Some are those worthless spamlords, who pester candidates with irrelevant jobs and submit worthless candidates to hiring managers.
But the good ones look for good matches and good candidates, and don't waste people's time with junk. One recruiter placed more people on my team, with a much higher hit-rate, than any other one I dealt with; when I was interested in changing positions, I let him know, and after a month in which he didn't bother me at all, he pointed me toward an opening that was a perfect fit for me.
If you build up relationships with recruiters, you'll learn which are which, and how to ignore the Robert Halfs and Manpowers while still getting the benefit of the good ones.
Recruiting these days seems like what real estate agents were from 2000-2008. Lots of people were cashing in on the wave. I feel the same thing is happening now with tech recruiting. Because of that there's so much crap out there that just taking the time to filter is an exercise in frustration.
I had one recruiter call me and sell me on a position as a portal developer. At the end of the call he finally asked "by the way what is a portal?" He was dead serious. I was livid.
