Yes, I did.
Your background aside, I have no idea how it works in Canada, but in the US the pool of money that is budgeted for recruiting comes from a different account and shows up on a balance sheet differently than wages and salaries. I have never had a hiring manager tell me, we can pay one amount for a position if we don't use a recruiter, and less if we do. I don't know how to say it any differently.
As for your comment about walking in the door and getting a job, I certainly wouldn't deny your personal experience. My recruiting experience has primarily been for roles involving specific technical skills, as opposed to roles like sales or account managers. I can imagine it might be possible to walk in and "sell" yourself to a VP of sales, whereas a CTO might be less impressed by a network engineer walking in and trying a similar approach.
Anyway, I'm going to suggest that you and I agree to disagree as Tony suggested in his last post.
