To me that just sounds like “we don’t want to pay you anything but do all the work for us anyways”. Is it supposed to be some tongue in cheek way of saying “fuck off if you’re a recruiter we don’t give a shit”? Or are they instead asking for a historical example of a good hire you facilitated?
It’s akin to saying “Oh you’re a systems software engineer? Prove it by designing and implementing our entire system for us, we won’t pay you for it, we just want to know you can do it”.
It's not akin to that at all. External recruiters are typically paid for placement (i.e. they get a commission paid on a hired employee after they're hired, typically 20–30% of base salary). There are good ones, but a non-trivial portion are just cold-email spamming everyone whose LinkedIn profile looks even remotely like it might match the jobs they're recruiting for and forwarding on anyone who replies.
For a company/hiring manager, one great candidate a month is far more valuable than a few dozen ones who aren't even close to matching the role. They're not saying "do the work for us", they're saying "if you want us to take your sourcing seriously, send us quality, not quantity."
I don't think it's a fuck off message at all. That would be just "fuck off". Why encourage recruiters if you didn't want to deal with them?
To me it says "don't just shotgun me with every rando candidate you have - I'll give you one chance, make it count". It's exactly the sort of thing you might say to a pushy recruiter you met at the bar who wants in to your business. To succeed, they must a) have a good candidate and b) understand your business (so they know that candidate is right for you).
And I'd say there's an enormous difference between what a software engineer does (spend months or years designing and implementing a system that is for a single "customer") to what a recruiter does (spend 1 hours of conversations/emails in qualifying a candidate who can be shopped out to any of a number of customers.).
But if the recruiter has already gone through the work of vetting the candidate, why would the company not just talk to the candidate directly and “cut out the middleman”, so to speak? What guarantee does the recruiter have that providing the company this holy grail candidate will be met with anything more than “wow good eye, thanks!”
That's not usually how business works. Many reasons, but talent is still hard to find and employers don't want to piss off someone who can find staff for them. And it's likely against the agreement the recruiter has with the candidate for the candidate to go direct to the employer.
It’s akin to saying “Oh you’re a systems software engineer? Prove it by designing and implementing our entire system for us, we won’t pay you for it, we just want to know you can do it”.