That's asinine. Because of some internal policy, you guarantee to waste people's time. It's already an asymmetric process, but behaviour like this makes it even more lopsided and plain wasteful.

You've hit the nail on the head. I appreciate the situation with companies. The "black hole" exists because they can't possibly deal humanly with every inquiry. To me, the question is: Why is the situation so asymmetric? Why is job hunting such a "seller's market?" Why do companies get hundreds, or thousands, of applications for one open position? It's like everyone who does similar work is continually submitting their application every time a position opens up within driving distance. If unemployment figures are as low as the government says, what's driving the deluge of applications? Is it simply "grass is greener" mentality?

Just to be pedantic, I would call it a "buyer's market" where the commodity is labor.

I think that the reason it is so asymmetric is because the normal company runs on multiple employees, which means that if they can't find one more person right now business still continues.

But the normal person only has time for one job, which means if they can't find one, they go hungry (so to speak).

The desire for employment is asymmetric and therefore the power accrues to the party with less desire.

>Why is the situation so asymmetric? Why is job hunting such a "seller's market?

Well the company can only accept 1 person for the position, whereas you are most likely willing to accept a position at a number of different companies, so there's an inherent asymmetry there, no?

You send out 100 applications to get a job, the company gets 100 applications per job. Where is the asymmetry?

It can become asymmetric based on how onerous the application process. Some tech companies have candidates do online exams, some even projects. The exam/project can take a day to complete. The company can just ignore the results for all but a handful of candidates...that is pretty asymmetric.

Ideally, the company should only push onerous application processes to applications once the list has been whittled down a bit, or only push them in cases where the results will actually be reviewed.

It's not just internal policy. There are various laws requiring public posting of positions in various circumstances.

Of course then not actually looking at the applications is a violation of at least the spirit of the law. Sometimes also the letter.

Or state policy lol. Or internal interpretation of state policy. lolwyers.