Do you percieve working with a recruiter as a 'Value Add' or 'Necessary Evil'?

Like in any field, there are good professionals and not so good ones.

Consider this, when working with a recruiter. A good recruiter should be creating value in your job search process via:

1. Access to jobs that are not advertised or posted
2. In depth knowledge of the client, and company culture, that the recruiter will share with candidates 
3. The ability to schedule interviews for candidates, rather than have them lost in a stack of resumes
4. The strong relationships recruiter has built with hiring authorities
5. Recruiter's ability to negotiate the best compensation package or pay rate
6. Feedback from other candidates recruiters have placed with these clients (inside information)
7. Knowledge of the market (who is growing, downsizing, merging)
8. Most job descriptions / requirements are lengthy, and hard to read. A good recruiter has inside knowledge, from experience and relationship with the hiring authorities, and is able to extract 2-3 key requirements from these wordy job descriptions.

IIT has posted an article "Before, During and After Interviews". Click here to read the article

Writing Resumes that Generate Interviews

It may seem like extra work, but have multiple versions of your resume.  Create a new version to address the specific job opportunity. Be sure to include specific things in your resume that a job requirement talks about.  Then keep track of each version of resume that you submitted.

There are a lot of things that you have done that you are proud of, but if it is not required in a specific job requirement, abbreviate (or completely eliminate) those irrelevant portions of your resume. Do not be emotionally  attached to all of your achievements.

Your resume does not need to impress you. It needs to impress your target audience (recruiters and 
hiring managers) 

If submitting a resume to a recruiter, it is OK if it is long, upto 6-7 pages. A good recruiter knows what a hiring manager wants to  see, and he/she may be able to help you with what to keep and what to get rid of

Importantly, do not lie on your resume. We see too many resumes with e.g. 5 jobs, and half the sentences are copied and pasted from one job to another. While it is true that we may do similar tasks in multipe positions, but a copy/paste job is very visible, and a big turn-off for the reader. Be creative, and rewrite the sentences. Remember, efforts put into writing a resume is an investment.  Poor investments result in poor returns...