It seems Automattic is part of a select group of tech companies who are desirable as places to work, and have more high quality applicants than they can hire, a

It seems Automattic is part of a select group of tech companies who are desirable as places to work, and have more high quality applicants than they can hire, and need to whittle down. That's great. And if I apply to one of those I really need to expect that. Now the company can be in this great position by being a world leading engineering organisation that is growing exponentially. Google, Facebook et al a few years back perhaps. But alternatively, any $RANDOMCOMPANY can think it is in this position not by attracting the best applicants globally, but by only hiring 3 people a year. The company still will get more high quality applicants than it can hire, so it needs to whittle down. But from the applicant side, applying to Google looks very different than applying to $RANDOMCOMPANY and they will drop in preference order. Taken to its logical extreme, each candidate will choose one company only to apply to based on the existing job pool and their expectations of getting the job. That seems silly.