As someone that's currently looking (with plenty of experience, corporate, startup, and contract), can confirm it's pretty rough out there. I think the application process is just becoming enshittified: because HR uses AI to filter, applicants are starting to use AI to apply, so we have volumes and volumes of nonsense flowing back and forth.

Been working professionally for ~15 years or so, and it's never been this bad. Other than "knowing someone" (i.e. a referral, and even that falls through routinely), not sure what the best way to snag a position is these days.

I just read this on CNBC:

  “US business continues to boom,” S&P Global Market Intelligence chief business
  economist Chris Williamson said in a statement. “To put the growth surge in
  context, barring the spike in demand following the opening up of the economy
  after the COVID-19 lockdowns, the latest improvement in business activity
  is the greatest recorded since early 2015. Business is clearly booming now in
  both manufacturing and services.”

Is it booming for everyone except software developers? I keep hearing about developers who have been looking for a job for 6 months or longer and don't get responses to applications.

Or is it some process failure (which you hint at) that is making it difficult to capitalize on that boom?