I don't understand why more companies don't leverage in person events. It's something my state does for government jobs and as an applicant, it's so much easier to chat up an agency rep about what they're looking for and schedule a formal interview.

It’s used by every single big co and a lot of smaller ones too. It just doesn’t scale well when you need to hire hundreds of engineers every year. I never actually seen public job postings bring in many leads that actually convert to offers. It’s one of the worst channels which is why candidates are getting such crap experience going that route