I would have thought the one thing these ATS systems could do by now is filter the obvious garbage resumes.

I can’t stop other people doing this, and not doing it if other people are is a disadvantage for me. Imprisoned in a dilemma of our own making.

What happens when you get an interview and spend time for a company you don't want to work for?

I’ll turn it down if further research shows I don’t want to work there? Why upfront my research if I’ll be ghosted anyway? Turning down interviews because “circumstances have changed” is hardly unusual

Ghost jobs on one side, ghost applications on the other. Some people will just send automated applications everywhere, every day, and check for responses. That leads to ghost responses, and the cycle continues.

Responding to someone to say you got their message but have changed your mind isn’t ghosting. Job hunting would be less miserable if rejections happened in a reasonable time frame

interview practice

You are happy you have anything to pay your bills ;)

Nice wordplay! (see Prisoner's dilemma)

+1

The hiring teams are employed. If they aren't in a position to fix the dynamics then nobody can. HR enjoys a vaulted position under which their suffering KPIs allow them to point their fingers at the market and shrug the blame from their shoulders . It isn't like they are going to suddenly band together and boycott AI. We've all had our sip from the fountain of eternal laziness and now we all want more.

that ship has sailed. companies already get 100s of applications for every job post even without candidates automating applications.

Sorting a few hundred documents don't seem like a very hard task for a software company.

But this is a classic prisoners dilemma then... If I don't do it and everyone else does then I am only hurting my own chances.

Based on what you're saying, the only way to actually fix this is to fix the underlying systematic problem. No idea how you do that, but seems like the only logical way I can think of