Look - I don’t need a job. My job is great, the pay is good, manager buys me stuff, but recruiters still hit up my Linkedin a couple times a month and I say pretty much the same thing -
Hi X,
Do you have the compensation range for this role? I'm looking for something in the 140-160k range at the moment
If they don’t reply or say “no”, I don’t care. If they do reply, why not? Worst case scenario I don’t take the job.
But you see, this doesn’t actually work. Whether or not they can afford the range, these energy vampires try to string me along.
I just had a recruiter message me, we did this chit chat, then 15 minutes before our call she asked for my resume. Oh ok, guess you didn’t see it front and centre on my Linkedin. I send her my resume and… No call. No more replies. Well I came home early from the gym for nothing.
Tl;dr Math.min(answerRecruiter, doNothing) can return less than 0. Documentation does not make this clear.
The answer to your question (“Why is it like this?”) is because they have somehow convinced employers that they can provide something their own (useless) HR droids can’t. It may or may not be true that they can, but they’re so firmly entrenched between employers and potential employees in some industries that it’s very difficult to find work without them. I think if I saw a recruitment agency building was burning down I’d barricade the doors so that fewer of them got out alive.