Value of placement services for non-members I am curious about what people think about value of limited period (typically, a year) placement services, provided by academic professional organizations, such as Academy of Management. For example, see this page. In particular, I am interested about the subject in the context of first-time academic job seekers, like me, targeting junior faculty or, more likely, postdoctoral opportunities. The reason I am asking this question is to determine the value and feasibility of those time-limited placement services, considering the availability of nice and free resources, such as HigherEdJobs.
For industry jobs recruiters are very important for a first time employee seeking contract work.  However for academic jobs I doubt they're of any use.  Like you said there are academic job sites like Higher Ed.  Each discipline also usually has a career website.

If you're looking for postdoc positions your advisor is the best resource because many are given out by word of mouth alone.  Finally each institution is usually required to place job announcements and applications on their HR's web page.  So spend some time going to each University's website.