It's almost like there needs to be a way to penalize applicants who SPAM.

Not only that, some organizations have policies to not accept information/applicants who don't follow the process through recruiter, HR, job board, etc. Now you're effectively "black balled" from applying the right way.

As far as I know, referrals are way more preferred that cold applications.

Same with good applications which aren't filtered out by these very same organizations lol

Are there orgs that will blackball you for contacting someone?

I've just seen that they will tell you that if you are interested to apply on the ATS.

hey man,

I totally agree with you. it's a bit a chicken and egg problem. You've got ATS systems filtering out candidates and then on the other side, you've got candidates auto-applying to a lot of unsuitable jobs.

We're trying to educate applications be more considerate and either apply where there's a fit or understand why there's no fot. If there's a fit however, then you should start building a relationship with someone first.