What you probably don't realize yet is that there are two problems here, or in other words, the problem is twice as grave as you might think it is.

Most recruiters and agencies are utterly incompetent. It's the fact that practically everyone involved in IT knows. That's why companies avoid dealing with recruiters in general, being unable to spot the good ones (and I certainly wish to believe they exist). But even if you run into a good professional recruiter, you are still going to be suffering from the second problem.

Which is developing on the other side of the fence. Software engineers too are painfully aware of the recruiter tactics and many good developers have long banned them. Recruiters might try to approach them but people won't even pick up the phone.

That means that even the good recruiters (if you ever find them) will only have a very narrow and scarce pool of good people to offer you. Much narrower than it might have been if things in the hiring industry were different.

What I'm saying is that you should not necessarily look at the recruiters as your salvation. There might be great people near you who effectively avoid the recruiters' radars. You really should look into finding means to discover and contact people directly.

It's not the thing that everyone is happy to admit but the reality is that hiring key people in software industry is manual labor which can't really be outsourced or automated. Recruiters in general are not involved in any of the industry, therefore they have no knowledge of what drives the businesses, what problems they are facing and how skilled individuals fit into the picture. Therefore, their only usefulness is to place the workers of lowest ranks where they don't play an important role. Everyone believes that recruiters are placing top people in top companies and playing an important role in the economy, that's the general story of their place in the universe that they like to spread and maintain, but the reality is that they mostly place low-level grunt workers who have no advanced skills and therefore do not require vetting by a competent specialist.

The only difference might be if a recruiter would be coming from a specific industry having spent there an appreciable number of years and having learned all the ins and outs. Then they would be able to fully understand the client needs and find the right people to satisfy the requirements. But then it would really be just a different form of "specialists hiring specialists", specifically "former specialists hiring specialists".

Your best bet under these circumstances is to dedicate some time to conducting PR activities like talking about your company, hanging out in the places where good developers hang out, unobtrusively advertising yourself to them and directly approaching certain people that you spot who you believe might be persuaded to come on board. Once more, it's long, tedious, manual labor but it's just the way things are.

Having said that, I do recognize the value that recruiters might provide to the industry if they changed their ways. There really is a place for them in the economy and they could in principle significantly ease the lives of both companies and candidates. But for now, they only seem to be making everyone's lives harder.