In general, recruiters are targeting the same set of job hoppers with attractive offers which have to be attractive to get the job hoppers to take them.
During the worst of the Obama recession, some friends and I put together a serious proposal to rent some of the glut of vacant office space and charge people a nominal fee to work for us so they would have the prestige of a job and an office cube from which to be recruited.
We debated about the deception such a plan would entail and, in the end, decided not to go forward with it for that reason.
We debated about the deception such a plan would entail and, in the end, decided not to go forward with it for that reason.
Similar plans have been discussed among IT forums since the beginning of the H1B slaughter took off after Y2K.
There is nothing deceptive about a trade association, or a consortium, or free-lancers sharing office space, or even sharing virtual office space for zilch.
What is deceptive and economically destructive is the practice of IT recuiting (or third-party recruiting or staffing in any industry) for dozens of different reasons.