Have you had a positive experience with a recruiter? What made it work?

I had once. Neil was friendly and knowledgeable. He knew important details about the job, he helped me prepare for the interviews and after each one, he called me and asked for feedback and he already gave the company's feedback.

It was about a job in another country, so we hesitated a bit with my wife. Neil tried to help us make the decision, he offered to talk to my wife too. The funniest moment was when he took some pictures in Belfast on a sunny day and sent them to us trying to prove us that they know the sunshine in Belfast too. (Sorry :P).

In the end, I received another offer from another country that I could not turn down and I had to back out from the one Neil helped with, but it was not his fault. In fact, he would have deserved that I take the job he proposed.

If you plan to move to Belfast, ping me and I give a contact to him.

Most of my jobs have been through people I know, but I did have a recruiter for the last two jobs. Both were positive experiences because they knew what I was looking for and didn't bug me constantly like a lot of recruiters do. They kept me updated as info came back from the potential employer and that was pretty much it.

Yeah. The guy was perfect. It was my first experience, when I got real offer in just two weeks since the first phone call. We managed to do two interviews abroad in those two weeks. Like, really abroad, 2500km from my home, not just skype calls. :) No stupid questions, everything was very quick, always on time. And two months after, I moved to another country and started a new job. Unfortunately, he left the company (and the country) few years ago.

Yea they we're/are great, focused mostly on getting to know my career goals and finding a contract for me that fit what I was looking for. They've kept in touch since then and send over interesting openings once in a while(without being in any way spammy)

I sought out some recruiters before "making the leap" into tech, and the assurance that I had some initial connections was really great. Even though those connections weren't even my in in the end, they set up my first couple interviews and really helped guide me.

I actually tried really hard to turn the interview into more of a conversation. Where the recruiter wasn't solely focused on me answering her questions, but instead through discussion I exposed my skills, experience, personality and she was able to get all of her questions answered in that way.

She mentioned at the end of the interview that I really stood out among others interviewing for the position. It wasn't a monotonous type of call of just question > answer then question > answer. Instead, it flowed and made it much easier for her to understand my goals, passion and culture fit.

My most positive experience with a recruiter was when I didn't get the job and still got actual feedback from the hiring team.

It was an overseas job and they gave me a task to complete, which I did.

Later, I got a reply from the recruiter saying that I didn't get the job but the team had a few things to say about my performance on the task.

While this might not be specific to this recruiter, but it sure says a lot about how the company culture and how they treat people, even if they don't end up working for them.

My first two jobs that I got were from Recruiters & they were both were really positive. Mostly because I think each of them took the time to talk to me, listen to my experiences & see if my skillsets would be a good fit for the roles that they were recruiting for. And they both did an awesome job following up with me after each interview in the process. 😄

I was contacted by Akuaro, a head hunting agency in Barcelona.
The first call with a recruiter lasted 2 hours, he was more interested in getting to know me and finding out what I wanted than what offers he had for me.
We talked pretty much every week for a couple of months until after a few interviews I dediced to take one offer which I was not 100% sure, but it was very good for my career.
After a few months we talked again, I wasn't happy, we got back on the interview train, in less than a month I now have an amazing offer signed and will start next week.

Let's see what happens on this one, but everything points to being an excepcional company and product and team as well.

My last IT company was KNPLabs. The job interview was amazing. We had a few good laughs and a very kind atmosphere. Two people (one dev and one agile helper) were leading the interview, asking very concrete questions (the tools I was using, how I could describe a component and so on) but also wider and deeper questions (how I was feeling when I was coding, what I was looking for in a company, what kind of mindset I had about learning...). During the interview I felt so good that I knew I wanted to work there.
(I left the company to follow other dreams but they are still in my heart).

I think the most important thing to consider when leading a job interview, is to do everything so that the interviewed person can be perfectly honest about their path and their ignorance. During this interview I felt I could be totally honest about everything (I even said that I knew my future colleagues would throw up when they would read my current code (!), but that I wanted to learn to write clean code).

This trustworthy and honest atmosphere changes everything.

Not yet, although I just found a new job and did have contact with loads of recruiters. Most of them were very nice and had jobs on offer that at least fitted my profile, but in the end they didn't have anything that really appealed to me. They were kind though!

I have two really great recruiters. Both of them know exactly what NOT to send me. :)

I have dealt with recruiters when trying to fill jobs in the companies I have worked for and also when I have been in the market for a new job myself. It always comes down to building a sincere and honest relationship with the recruiter.

When I get a cold call from a recruiter who has seen my resume/experience and is trying to fill a job opening with someone like me, I am always responsive and friendly and always offer to share the job description with others who might be interested. Sometimes I ask a few questions to get a dialog going between us. Even if I am not interested, I am kind and appreciative that they contacted me on the chance that they may have the right job for me in the future.

Sometimes it does seem like the jobs they have are so far off from your own experience but when that right one comes their way, they just may remember the kind person who responded and didn't shut the door in their face.

Most of the recruiters who contact me on Linkedin are really unprofessional and annoying, they just do a text search and spam you with stuff (I made a small webtool called lazy-bastards to help them :D).

But the one that made me change to my current company was quite good. He actually read my cv, was really there for me to trade my salary/bonuses, he managed to buy me time on the weekend for the tech test and he managed to get me a skype interview rather than for me to go to the place myself.

I always try to keep in mind, though, that they are sales people, and you should take out 90% of what they say to you to find out what they mean.
They see you just as a fisherman would see a nice 300Kg Tuna, if they are clever enough they can sell that fish and make a fortune, before going straight to the next fish, but that does not allow them to be unprofessional, their job is quite easy really, the only part that I would not be able to do is the trade, and to talk people into changing job, that is why they are recruiters and I am not :D