Operating at the level you do, you will probably have your own stories to tell about dealing with "recruitment agencies", "executive search" firms or "head-hunters". With luck, you will be able to recall interviews that were very professional and where you and the consultant were clearly from the same planet when ambitions and technologies were being discussed.

But it is also probable that you will have experienced unresponsive recruiters, unreturned calls, and even horror stories of CVs being submitted without the candidates's approval.

The fact is that recruitment has become a bandwagon. Levels of service vary: irrespective of your qualities, experience and marketability, unless your skills should magically match an existing opportunity, chances are that your details will be lost among 1000's of CVs in some anonymous database. Your future prospects could depend on the extent to which your details find an electronic match with an appropriate position with no human intervention.