When you work with a recruiter, sometimes called a search partner or a headhunter, it should be a match made in heaven. You should feel great about the relationship, and your recruiter friend should feel the same way.

I know people who have been placed in job after job over twenty years by the same recruiter. There is a high level of trust.

The working person calls the recruiter when he or she is ready for a change. The recruiter gets paid by his or her client employers to find great people, so when the employee is ready to jump ship, his or her recruiter friend already has a few employers in mind.

That’s the ideal situation. There are plenty of great recruiters in the talent marketplace. I relied just as heavily on my recruiter friends as an HR leader as they relied on my company and others for their business. It’s a symbiotic relationship when the energy is right.

Unfortunately the barriers to entry in the recruiting profession are very low. Pretty much anybody can print up business cards and call himself or herself a recruiter. Bad recruiters use fear and intimidation to browbeat and bully candidates.

One time, I sat on a panel with a recruiter who said to the crowd “When I call you, you’d better pick up the phone. I represent your livelihood. You’d better take my call.” I had to keep a plastic smile pasted on my face throughout the bully recruiter’s obnoxious rant. I was glad I hadn’t had dinner before the event or I might have thrown up on his shoes.

Anybody who tells you that you need them is a person you don’t need. Fearful people cannot help you. Lousy recruiters will tell you that you’ll be lucky if they can get you an interview, because your background sucks. A great question for you to ask them back is “That is odd – in that case, why are you wasting time on the phone with me right now?”

You can see why bully recruiters would talk down to you and tell you that you have nothing valuable. The more effectively they can destroy your self-esteem, the more willing you will be to take whatever crappy job offer they serve up. The more confident you are in your own abilities, the harder they’ll have to work to negotiate an offer for you with their employer client.

If your client were paying you to find new employees, your favorite phone call to make would not be the one where you have to tell an HR chief that the company’s favorite candidate — you! — wants ten thousand more in salary than the company wants to pay.

Still, excellent recruiters make those phone calls all the time. Here are five questions only low-end recruiters will ask you. These questions are red flags. When you hear them coming out of the mouth of a recruiter, you’ll know that you’re wasting your time trying to get this recruiter to see your talent and represent you appropriately to employers.