I thought of a great an analogy about recruiters. You can say that Taylor Swift has x years of experience as a musician. Then you have some person who can produce his own music, play wild advanced guitar solos with hammer ons, pulls offs, bends, slides. Sing and scream while doing it.
But Taylor Swift still has more experience.
It’s the same thing in programming. A lot of programmers with experience are bad programmers. I’ve had to work with many and I’ve been sidelined by them, over office politics, when I kindly tolerated their low performance.
I just think recruiters need to be knocked down a peg. They tend to not respect talented people who don’t have a lucky career path.