What is the complexity of the work of a hunter in IT and the difference from HR in IT? Why is there such a profession at all?

Question

Personnel Management

I don't understand why hunter is a separate category and profession in IT. When it has long been known that it is better to look through the already hired programmers themselves and meetups, conferences and hackathons.
Why was it made a separate profession in IT? In other professions it is clear, but in IT - no.
Who can explain?

Answer 1

HR is not always a separate profession from a hunter ...
Because now there is a good demand for good IT specialists (juniors - to be silent, the fact that you are already overkill is another; we are talking about the demand for really qualified ones).
So good that it is no longer possible to entice with a purely salary. So you have to use cunning methods to hunt. Which means a lot of time, specialization, slightly different skills - that is, a different kind of HR profession.

Answer 2

As far as I understand, hunters, in theory, keep track of cool specialists and keep in touch with them, if possible, luring them to the right company.
In the Russian Federation, for some reason, hunters are simply called a personnel officer who conducts an initial selection of clearly inadequate candidates.
Obviously this is quite a different activity. In the first case, it is possible to allocate a hunter in each area, including in IT. In the second, the personnel officer does not particularly look for (placement of the site on hh.ru can hardly be called a serious search), but only works with candidates.
Oh, this is my guess, I could be wrong.