Ok, but I have a lot of jobs to apply for, and I'm going to save a lot of time by not hand-crafting each application. So the relevant question is: does the reduction in hit rate outweigh the increase in application rate? I argue: probably not. Depends if you're exhausting all postings.

The whole thing seems screwy to me. You only hire people who put a lot of effort into contacting you? So you don't recruit? A good candidate is a good candidate whether or not they spent half an hour on a cold pitch.

The problem is, you're putting up job ads (that might well be fake, candidates don't know) and expecting candidates to put in a lot of effort. You're not respecting the nature of the situation - both sides have a very low hit rate, so it's irrational for either side to put much effort into individual transactions (if they're in demand). Filters that filter out low-effort applications filter for one thing: people who have an incentive to put in effort. That doesn't just cut out people that are spamming.

> Ok, but I have a lot of jobs to apply for, and I'm going to save a lot of time by not hand-crafting each application

OK, so do that.

You’re applying to a lot of jobs and you don’t care too much about any one of them in particular, so why should I care about your application in particular? I’ll save a lot of time by not closely reviewing your application.

Again, my point is that most people aren’t in demand and most jobs aren’t that demanding.

Someone is going to read the job post in full and put in a modicum of effort and will be a decent fit. I’ll look for that person vs. the person who put in zero effort and will be a decent fit.

This doesn't make sense. If "minimum bar" is your selection criteria and you're inundated with so many "good enough" candidates that you can't interview them all & it doesn't matter who you pick, you're overpaying. Why not drop your offers until you're selecting from a smaller pool?

I don't mean this hypothetically, I mean: isn't this what most companies actually do?

But in any case, what you're saying here is: "if the job has a large applicant ratio and you are unlikely to get hired, then I will use time spent as a filtering mechanism." The rational thing to do is to not apply to those positions (or spray & pray).

>This doesn't make sense. If "minimum bar" is your selection criteria

I think "minimum bar" refers to technical skills, not all selection criteria. It's perfectly sensible* to look at a larger pool with the minimum skills and select from the few with the right attitude and attention to detail.

That's not the same strategy as reducing the pool to the cheapest candidates regardless of their attitude, and isn't going to produce the same hiring decisions.

* even if it's not a universal strategy

You must be that rare unicorn that actually realizes their company isn't a future FAANG. A lot of consternation over hiring could be avoided if most companies realized they can get by just fine with average developers. But most people psychologically want to hire the "best" developer available and so would not be satisfied with "can do the job".