I know in the good old days it was the way to go, and HR people are also more open to get external solicitation at any time, so I believe you when you say it works.

I’d put on the table that I twice received direct contact from candidates and it felt super weird (I don’t work in HR to be clear). I guess some would value the scrappiness, I had more of a “have I been stalked ? am I getting spammed ?” sensation.

We also had automated pipelines to handle candidates applying through our recruiting page, so entering them manually into the system would have been more of a PITA (I actually politely told them to apply through the site)

In general I’d say for small/middle size companies, direct candidature through the company’s own site is not going through a blackhole, and pretty much appreciated (no recruiting fee, went through the front door etc.)