Absolutely.

While I haven't—yet—gone to Michele's lengths, I consistently handle much of the recruiter's responsibilities. Recruiters are almost always chronically overworked. Often they aren't technical enough to read into résumés for my admittedly difficult positions.

Because of these issues, there's also a risk of not even seeing a good candidate. I've been lucky enough to work for some highly desirable employers, which means that I get a lot of applicants, and filtering becomes a problem. One of my best hires ever almost got filtered out by my recruiter. After I became dissatisfied with the initial apparent applicant quality, I realized that because this was a tricky position to fill (the job description was murder), I needed to review every single application for this position. When I said THIS IS THE GUY, she told me that she'd put him in the reject pile "because he doesn't have experience in one of your preferred areas."

Preferred. Not "required." Deep breath.

Ever since then, I review every candidate and provide feedback on *all* of them to the recruiter. This is a simple list of how well each candidate ranks on desirable characteristics and job requirements. This helps my recruiter understand what I'm looking for, makes them more efficient, and they're more likely to go out of their way for me. Lastly, I add a note if I think the candidate's promising but not a good fit for my open position. This way, I hope that I'm ensuring that great potential hires wind up working for some part of my organization.