The application spam hurts both candidates and companies. Unfortunately the only way that would change is if the entire application funnel got overhauled to s

The application spam hurts both candidates and companies. Unfortunately the only way that would change is if the entire application funnel got overhauled to stop using paper resumes as the point of entry. You can't reasonably spend time vetting hundreds of resumes for quality candidates. And as a candidate you can't spend hundreds of hours perfectly an online application to stand out. You end up having to game the system as a candidate. Tailoring your resume and technical interviewing skills to get in the door, but neither of those skills are reflected of your ability to deliver business value. Outbound and reference based recruiting is probably better from a company POV, but that takes investment of time and money, and often gets offloaded to hr or recruiters who are not technically adept and are more worried about getting high conversion rates over actual job performance. From the candidate side, it means you get better opportunities based on your social connections than your technical skills, which can also lead to programmers who can talk their way into a job but can't FizzBuzz. References from current employees seem to yield the best job-performance to applicant ratio, but can remove strong candidates without the "right connections" from the funnel. Temp-to-hire is a nice compromise, but presents its own variety of issues.