Some newbie, "wannabe" (i.e. 'nutcase') decided to weigh in on one of my posts (now deleted and blocked) with the sage comment: "Recruiters are no big deal.  They are just middlemen."  Bright comment to leave on a blog site populated by 50,000 recruiters, right?

I thought about this a while, and came up with a rebuttal of sorts: 

"Please excuse me for being a middleman while I sell you down-river, to someone important, then..."

The very word "entrepreneur" is at the heart of what a 'middleman' is:  someone who enters into the midst of a deal or market, determines a need, and then provides a service or product that fills that need.  It is a word composed of the roots "entre" (French for to enter into, as entering the midst of a situation), and "preneur" (French for 'taking control').

Here's a list (or two) of middlemen that changed history:

1) Moses

2) Henry Kissinger

3) Jesus

4) Toshiro Mifune in "Yojimbo" 

5) My 15th Great-granduncle, Sir John Hawkins (featured in the article below):

      http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a31238/seven-middle-men-a...

So, next time someone treats you like you are an "unimportant middleman", remind them why they needed you in the first place, and how the way they treat you makes a difference in their lives.

"Recruiters are only middlemen".  

Yeah, sure, and "diamonds are only carbon."

Apparently, there are actually people who agree with my viewpoint and consider that of my critic as being rather stupid, frankly.  Here is an example.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0sQCuLAf3u8C&pg=PA36&lpg=...