It's worth noting a lot of these "skip the black hole" companies only work with web development positions. Vettery, in particular, contacted me repeatedly to try to schedule an interview when I was looking once. When I told the recruiter what it was that I did in software engineering she proceeded to ask me whether I was "full stack," "back-end" or "front-end." I had to try extremely hard to get her to understand that I worked with computers that are embedded inside of devices. So it was very much a waste of time. And even after that they kept trying to get in touch with me for months.
Contrast this with traditional recruiters who at least know something about the field they're recruiting into beyond what's in vogue in SFO.
As somebody who also works in embedded systems, I had almost the same experience with Vettery.
I tried them out a year or two ago, and found that there was literally no way to add keywords/tags as a user. So if Vettery didn't have an existing keyword for [language or skill you're good at], then you have no way to advertise that skill to companies hiring from Vettery.
Then Vettery basically just wouldn't leave me alone and one of their agents kept pestering me to finish my profile. I told them that I couldn't fill it out because I couldn't add the right keywords for my specialties, and they said something like "if you send me a list of your specialties, I can raise a support ticket to try and get them added to the list". I wrote off their platform as fundamentally broken right in that moment.
Vettery: "We use machine learning and real-time data to match talented job-seekers with inspiring companies. Our goal is to enrich and automate the recruiting process."
Yep, we are aware and working to get past that limitation. Part of this is trying to make a more efficient and effective "resume" which brings in the right info while maintaining privacy.
So a company can only see candidates that are a high match for the culture and work environment they create. And, then they can see candidates who match the position they are hiring for, i.e. an embedded hardware/software position or so on.
The thing is that you don’t have any embedded postings. So there are no companies to match us with. Your first recruiter was at least honest about that. But if you’re only going for web developers you should be honest about that from the start, and when someone then expresses that they aren’t a web developer you should have a way to handle that that doesn’t involve pestering them relentlessly or filing a support ticket and hoping that your engineering team believes it’s a real thing.
Contrast this with traditional recruiters who at least know something about the field they're recruiting into beyond what's in vogue in SFO.