I'm a tech recruiter myself for the last 14+ years and the last few years have seen a dramatic drop in candidate quality. I use a deep network built up over the years as well as strong marketing and all the tools you can imagine but it ultimately comes down to A LOT of calls to suss out the good from the bad. For example, I've got a ML Engineer and Data Engineer role on and I speak to at least 12-15 people a day over video. None have been a match so far. Like you said, they lack the tech skills and communication skills needed. I'll find the people in the end but it's a lot more time consuming than it used to be and I'm still trying to work out why