My buddy Steve Boese has a nice post up today related to how bad cold calling recruiters suck.  From the HR Technology Blog:

"Recruiter - So tell me, what are you doing these days? Are you working full-time? Are you contracting or consulting?

Steve - Well, I sort of do a number of things, I'm keeping very busy. 

At this point I am basically stalling, because I genuinely want to know if the Recruiter really doesn’t know what I am doing, or they are using Recruiter jedi mind-trick #7 and attempting to see if what I say matches what they ought to know about me, (that's assuming that since they are calling me about an opportunity, they should know something about me)."

The moral of the story:  There are a lot of bad recruiters out there.  Want to stand out? 

Have a take.  Tell the candidate what you liked in their background that you think makes them a potential fit for the search you're leading.  You don't need a research assistant to do that.  You just have to give a @#$%.

Always be selling, people.  It's lame when you don't sell - everyone is uncomfortable except you.