But you did the right thing too, which is working around HR to get your name at the top of the stack. There isn't anything nefarious about doing this. You're creating your own referral, which is the best source of employees for a company.
Now, for the technology world, the valley, or any company where people with unique skills are needed, HR unit struggles to help the company to hire the right people. That's why we hear everywhere rants about HR, recruiters etc. The solution may be to focus on newer tools for hiring or in contrary to focus on pre-modern methods; like leveraging your existing connections, using conferences, hiring competitors etc.
For recruiting technical people, it is ideal that the recruiters has relevant technical background. The reality is mostly the opposite. So you never know how many good candidates are filtered out because their resumes are lack of flashy keywords.
If the recruiters don't feel hurt, I prefer to screen the resumes by myself. The worse scenario is that you are scheduled for a phone interview. When you look at the resume, it is full of flashy keywords while lack of experience in "serious" projects. I fully understand the candidates are eager to get a job. But after you spent dozens of hours to talk to these unqualified candidates with flashy resumes, it becomes a negative flag. Well, these flashy resumes are a result of the tech-recruiting industry.
I worked for a while for Company A, which was founded by a team that included senior engineers and senior management from larger company B, licensed technology from B, did critical contract work for B, and at one point was supposed to become the primary manufacturer of B's products.
Company A shut down. My resumé went into company B's HR department, never to be heard from again. Eventually I had to pull a string that led to B's senior management. Suddenly an interview process was setup.
I get there, and the first words out of the HR drone's mouth when we sat down, with a deeply confused look on her face, were "What's Company A?". She'd just suffered severe whiplash when a directive from on high had told her that she would be setting up an interview for a candidate she'd ignored. She wasn't new, she'd been there over two years.
Everyone involved in my hiring except her knew what A was, who I was, and why I was there. The interview process was little more than a check for whether I annoyed the hell out of the people I'd have to work with or not. I was being handed to B on a silver platter, a pre-vetted, pre-trained, instantly-productive candidate. The most senior technical person who interviewed me walked into the room, sat down, and said "I really don't have anything to ask you".
If you insist on using recruiters, do not put them in HR. Embed them with the departments they're hiring for, where they might actually learn something about the work the company does and what it needs.