I also suspect many of the "searches" are little more than pro-forma in order to justify hiring the person who they actually want to hire.
Then there is also the issue of the quotas that do not officially exist.
I may not have had to hire engineers but I know in for my own business, I want to find a person with a "works well with others" personality. I have also found that many diplomas mean zero when it comes to inteligence or knowledge. The applicant may have a diploma but that no longer indicates actual competence. It just means that someone was able to jump through hoops to get piece of paper indicating hoop jumping.
There is one other issue. Before a corporation is alowed to go out of the USA to obtain employees they have to look inside the USA first. So they do a pro-forma search with standards that are reasonable but impossible to find and then "surprise" they are froced to look outside the USA.
Now this I have seen ... When i was interviewing about this time last year ... the interviews were so difficult that I would literally study for 20 hours+ before an interview. It used to be that an engineer could get hired just by walking in.