Yes, annoying to me. It's unsolicited, unwanted email from a stranger, interrupting my concentration several times a day, and often not even intended to be sent

Yes, annoying to me. It's unsolicited, unwanted email from a stranger, interrupting my concentration several times a day, and often not even intended to be sent to me. This is the very definition of spam -- why would you consider this an acceptable practice? There's no fool-proof filter for this. I can't safely filter out all email containing certain keywords, even from external email domains. I would get legitimate email containing those words from external domains -- legit candidates, people I met at conferences, etc. I don't argue that it's good to contact a real person when trying to get a job. But at least take the effort to ensure you're actually emailing the person you intend, not some other person who happens to have the same first name! Given that the OP applied to nearly three hundred companies, I can absolutely guarantee he just sent these out blindly based on guessing the first name. And seeing as he only got phone screens out of 11% of these companies, one would assume most recipients of these emails view them the same way I do: garbage.