The particular 'mess' I've encountered was I applied (wrote 11 pages of interview material) on 2024/09/29 and then received a canned 'yeah whoops sorry for taking this long, not interested' on 2025/03/24. That's almost 6 months of delay from submission to first contact.

Terrible process. You need to give feedback early if you're not interested in someone, not leave them hanging for nearly half a year.