Well, this is my _apologia pro vita sua_ moment. I dislike many things about recruiters, recruiting practices, etc. but yet I am a headhunter and I don't think it's an evil job. Here's why:
We live in a talent driven economy -- there are not enough people with the skills we need to fill the jobs we have. Even during this economic downturn, layoffs, etc. we have never been as busy as we are right now. Why? Because good people are hard to find.
Now, in the old days, good people were hard to find, but it was hard for them to know how much they were worth. Enter the middleman, he's talking to candidates all day, gathering compensation information, evaluating where people are in the market, etc. He's an information disseminator, telling candidates how much they are worth and telling clients how much they should pay, given the market. Without recruiters distributing this information, you have big disparities in compensation! And I think when there are disparities, the losers are most employees (though some people win by being grossly overpaid, but this generally gets fixed fairly quickly).
So, that's reason number one, information dissemination, which leads to better compensation for everyone.
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I agree with you... I also dislike how some headhunters lie and mislead you. A headhunter once told me that I got the job but that I had to just wait a few weeks for "procurement" to approve the deal. He didn't know that I knew someone on the inside, and it turns out that I was just #2 in line. But the truth is, the headhunter always gave me hints that he is the kind of guy that would do that to me, so fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
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