It was difficult enough to get a resume read during ‘the old normal’ times. In these current times, the competition in many locales is massively greater.
20,000 lined up to get applications for the new Walmarts opening in the DC area, for example.
I recall at several companies during the 80s and 90s the personnel department could collect applications and resumes, toss them into a box, and have the janitorial person toss the box into the trash at the end of the day. When companies get inundated with applications and resumes, they don’t take the time to read them. They might pull a half-dozen or so out of the stack eventually, but most end up in File 13.
In the 1980s I noticed a trend of companies using personnel from temp agencies. In some cases, they only needed the person short term. In other cases, they might offer the ‘temp’ a full time job after a while. The companies used the temp agencies as screeners. That made it easier for the company to ‘return’ an incompetent ‘temp’ without the potential threat of a lawsuit.
Now the recruiters are collecting resumes to try & sell their services to clients- for jobs that are a year old or never even existed in the first place. Watch it with the ones who seem to want some obscure “experience” or what the client “is looking for” keeps “evolving”.
I read somewhere that a lot of these jobs are posted for the benefit of shareholders/ investors to make the company look like it has more business than it does. I don’t doubt it. The ads keep running & running- or wait a few months & run them again. Nobody has turnover like that.
It’s a damn mess.
More frequently, you have to apply online and then the application is scanned for key words. Only if your resume has enough of the key words they are looking for does a human look further into your application. I think this is especially true in the tech fields.