Everything you mention I kind of consider par for the course. How would you even know if your recruiter wasn't doing that? To expect otherwise, I think, is a little naive.
The economics of the recruiting business, as you pointed out, reward behaviour ranging from predatory to scummy. The best you can hope for is the guys who are merely sharks, and not scumbags.
Yet, the negative aspect you mention, is still contingent on being able to convince people to leave your company. Having talented people leaving your company is a sign you're doing something wrong; you either have a flaw you need to address or you shouldn't be concerned in the slightest.
My thesis goes, if all that was keeping someone behind was an unexpected offer out of the blue you had already lost them.
I'm not in recruitment myself, and I agree that ideally you want your employees not to leave even when contacted by a recruiter!
I assume the idea behind refusing to work with recruiters who have been unethical in the past is to create a disincentive, in the hopes of reforming the economics of recruiting so you can get recruiters who will work with you rather than against you.
You'd imagine there would be some recruiters who would aim to behave ethically and to cultivate a reputation for being ethical, as that reputation would be valuable to a recruiter in terms of getting clients.
The one time I was job-hunting I saw some pretty unethical stuff - I once had a recruiter e-mail me a programming test along with a solution another candidate had submitted, and almost every recruiter asked for a summary of technical interview questions so they could brief other candidates. I would have thought using unethical recruiters would actively hinder your recruitment process - so there'd be no market for their services.
I mean, evidently it doesn't work that way, but I think that's the aim of refusing to work with certain recruiters.
The economics of the recruiting business, as you pointed out, reward behaviour ranging from predatory to scummy. The best you can hope for is the guys who are merely sharks, and not scumbags.
Yet, the negative aspect you mention, is still contingent on being able to convince people to leave your company. Having talented people leaving your company is a sign you're doing something wrong; you either have a flaw you need to address or you shouldn't be concerned in the slightest.
My thesis goes, if all that was keeping someone behind was an unexpected offer out of the blue you had already lost them.