Usually the first filtering step is done without much PII - if it's a paper/word document then you can decide what information to include and it's filtered base

Usually the first filtering step is done without much PII - if it's a paper/word document then you can decide what information to include and it's filtered based on that before interviews (which is how it's always worked for me, my employer knew nothing about my background, history, ethnic group, race/religion and it was the same for each candidate who applied for the position). IMO it should be a requirement that at least 1 filtering step in a hiring process is done without the employer knowing certain pieces of information (and it would be down to them to ensure they have a process that avoids collecting this information before step 2 which you can then hold interviews/video calls etc.)