“This is John at Acme Associates. I have a rock star engineer that may be a fit for your open positions. He authored the first version of Amazon S3, wrote the kernel code for the International Space Station, and actively contributes to over 1000 open source projects. He’s at the beginning of his process, but won’t be on the market long. Does this sound like a candidate you might be interested in?”
Occasionally I can’t stop myself and ask to see the resume, at which point I find that the candidate lived next door to the project lead for Amazon S3, once contacted the ISS via his ham radio, and was at an open source conference attended by over a 1000 people. ;)
It's good to have a sales hook, but is meaningless if you can't deliver a product that backs the pitch.
LinkedIn lists 5,637 people within 50 miles of Boston with the title of recruiter, and 19,121 with the title software engineer.