Try www.headhunter.net, a lot of companies is posting jobs there without headhunters.

average cut for a head hunter agency in this area is 20-30% of first years salary.

So what? It's not from your pocket - company pays it, and they make sure headhunter delivers for it. If you can find jobs without them, do it.

I worked couple months as a recruiter in placement agency. I will recommend this experience to each graduate - do it for 3 months for free as an intern! It will teach you the other side of business: That you have 10 job descriptions you are working with, and hundreds or thousands potential candidates. Sometimes you have the same positions what are posted on net. But you know more about the company than what is posted: because company is your client, you know something about inside politics in company, what they plan to do next, what thay really need (but HR did not want to print it in ad). You work with same manager hiring programmers for months, you know him by voice in phone. If you send him many wrong candidates without screening, you lose his business. You know how interview with previous candidate went, and why s/he was rejected, or why salary negotiation fizzled.

You'll be able to read hundreds of resumes, learn how simple they should be, and how to make recruiter's job simpler (so make your resume be more likely to be picked).

Really, I recommend any young programmer to try to play the other side.

pmas

To make errors is human. But to make million errors per second, you need a computer.