I occasionally get contacted about job opportunities by recruiters. While I find this a bit annoying I don't see anything wrong with using recruiters. I do believe, however, that their doing it wrong. At least in our industry - software development that is.
What they are ultimately failing at is making me interested about the job (if I was looking that is).
It's not personal
If it's not personal is borderline spam and will be treated as such. When messaging me, at least mention my name. Tell me something personal, something else than you like my LinkedIn profile. And yea, it's unlikely that I'm willing to relocate if I'm not actively seek something new.
Facts are wrong
Just like with employers are discarding candidates that can't write a proper CV, so does candidates when they read bad ads. All to often I see adds that confuse different technologies, use technical terms in wrong sentences. At least let a developer proof read it before publishing, that's the least you can do.
It's not relevant
Write about the stuff us programmers are interested in. Which company is it for? All to many won't disclose who's the client and that's a instant turn down. What is the company offering? I'm not talking about salary, I talking competence development, team activities, responsibilities etc. Don't tell me about the stock price and nett worth of the company. While it's tempting to think that a large public company provides job security I would argue that it's exactly the opposite (and by Swedish union rules you will be the first to go when the recession hits).
There is no need list every framework/technology that the client have ever used in any project. Just give us the ballpark. If you hire someone from a different industry, what framework he/she knows will probably be the least of the clients problems (as long as you don't hire a embedded dev for UI design job).
I could go on but I think I'll stop there for now. Let's improve the recruitment business, it will benefit us as developers as well as our employers.