http://www.quora.com/What-does-a-top-technical-recruiter-make/answe...

This is a really interesting question, partly because of the presumption that "it doesn't require a lot of skill to do the job"...  which is really, really wrong and very far off the mark.

I know, because I was an engineer before I was a recruiter, and I'm the fifth generation of engineers in my family -- going back to my great-great grandfather with the same name who held a patent for manufacturing corrugated metal roofing.  His son, my great-grandfather, designed the Los Angeles Harbor -- the largest harbor in the World at that time, working for the Army Corps of Engineers.  In order for that to happen, he had to graduate 2nd in his class at West Point, and had to defeat opponents of his plan like Leland Stanford, Henry and Collis Potter Huntington, and others who believed that the harbor should be located at Santa Monica, instead of Long Beach.  See:  The Free Harbor Contest at Los Angeles

Recruiting took me longer to learn and was much harder work than engineering in my opinion, but it also pays more...  my pay grade is a little bit above that of a PhD in Chemical Engineering (I have a 'second bachelors' degree in it, after my first degree in Philosophy from Princeton, which was the highest-rated academic department in the World at that time) with an equal number of years of experience.  Of course that fluctuates, sometimes much higher, sometimes lower. 

As far as becoming a recruiter goes, about 90% of all people I've ever met who tried to become recruiters were unable to make a living at it.  It is not an easy profession, since it combines selling and marketing with management consulting and often (in my case) knowledge of Technology.  

Most of the recruiters I know, who are successful enough to stay in the business for ten or more years, are multi-talented people, usually with Ivy-league educations and/or other highly-educated accomplished people in their families.  

The impression that you have of vapid recruiters who "don't have skills" may be due to the fact that many, many people want to become recruiters for the high income (management consulting is one of the highest-paid of all professions, similar to surgeons and attorneys), and they call themselves such, but are really failures on their way out of that industry.   Certainly, some people who fail at recruiting are very successful in other fields, though.

In any case, most of what a recruiter does is simply invisible to candidates and to other people they contact.  Recruiters need to be part detective, part salesman, part scientist and completely determined in order to succeed.  It can actually be one of the most rewarding of professions for multiple reasons... 

Search Firms are now charging fees as high as $100 million for one placement (such as the placement of my Princeton classmate Eric Schmidt at Goofle).  So, there is really no "cap" on the income of a recruiter.  One recruiter I knew of had a $3million income he reported on his tax returns over 20 years ago.

So, I hope this answers your question, and helps dispel the insane idea that recruiting is an easy business... think about it rationally for a second:  why would management consulting be paid twice as well as engineering (on average) if it was so easy and anyone could do it?  The false idea comes from the huge number of people who never really succeed in the industry, bringing a certain amount of taint to it.... 

I would compare this to waiters and waitresses who call themselves "actors".  Mostly they are just "wanna-be"s.

QUESTION: "What do top technical recruiters make?" 

ANSWER: They make successful placements