I have been on both sides of a recruiter, and don't really see the point. On the employee side, a recruiter placed me at a job that I already knew about and would have applied for myself if it were allowed. All this achieved was costing my employer a ton of money -- I probably cost them about 2x as much as I would have if they didn't have to pay the recruiting agency. Everyone seems happy, and it's not my money, so whatever.
On the other side, the thing about recruiters editing your resume is true. We have interviewed candidates that claim they have some buzzword we are looking for, like TDD, but can't write a simple unit test on the whiteboard. It's nice that you know what TDD is, but not so nice that you don't actually know it. No hire.
(FWIW, my resume was similarly embellished. I intentionally omit things I know so that nobody expects me to do them; TDD is one of those. Lying is in the recruiter's best interest, since they get a lot of money if their candidate is hired. If the candidate's reputation is damaged by their lies, well, oh well, they can just get another candidate.)
recruiters are a filter, if you are a company hiring, you'll get hundreds of resumes most of which don't even apply to the position being listed. By using a recruiter, you only have to deal with the cream of the crop.
Sure some people can bypass a recruiter with bullshit, but you'd still have to deal with those if you were doing the recruiting yourself.
There are also some benefits as an employee. If you have a good recruiter, you can tell them exactly what you are looking for, and they'll be on the lookout for those types of jobs for you.
But as it is with all things, for every good recruiter, there are thousands of shitty ones, who'll send to companies anyone who is stupid enough to give them a resume, and who'll tell you to apply to jobs that aren't even on the same level as what you can actually do.
Every good recruiter experience that people have told me about...involved them finding the recruiter through word of mouth...I don't remember a single positive recruiter story that involved being cold called out of the blue.
But it is your money in a way. If you went to a company that typically uses recruiters, and you came to them without a recruiter, you'd be saving them a bunch of money - money that you might be able to negotiate into a sign-on bonus or a higher salary.
On the other side, the thing about recruiters editing your resume is true. We have interviewed candidates that claim they have some buzzword we are looking for, like TDD, but can't write a simple unit test on the whiteboard. It's nice that you know what TDD is, but not so nice that you don't actually know it. No hire.
(FWIW, my resume was similarly embellished. I intentionally omit things I know so that nobody expects me to do them; TDD is one of those. Lying is in the recruiter's best interest, since they get a lot of money if their candidate is hired. If the candidate's reputation is damaged by their lies, well, oh well, they can just get another candidate.)