Are there hundreds of applications for every engineering role? Yes. But most of those applications don’t meet the minimum requirements. A senior position requiring 4yrs experience will see > 90% of its applications coming from new grads with zero experience. It’s mostly noise.

It should be noted that many companies don’t have any entry-level roles open. That’s not ideal, but new grads are arriving with minimal practical skills while the landscape of complexity continues to increase. Sure the top tier are amazing but they go to FANG to get rich on RSUs, or become a founder themselves.

I hope you'll address a few points:

1.Job hunting is dehumanizing: Most of the time you will receive no response to a carefully worded cover letter. There is no option to speak with a human, or point of contact. (I dub this /Throwing hope into the void and see what sticks/.)

2.Job hunting is primarily online. From searching job posts to application, the reach of an open position is literally world-wide.

3.Due to Covid, remote work is now in the zeitgeist, opening up remote work to many who otherwise wouldn't have considered it.

4.Digital tools for resume writing and bulk sending.

5.The stagnation of salaries, increased cost of living, and poor investment options has forced many into living paycheck to paycheck. In order to /get ahead/ the only option is to constantly seek new positions.

The deluge recruiters are feeling is merely the tip of a iceberg.

Many job postings are far too open versus the reality of who they’d accept. If you’re expecting a deluge, then make sure you are highly transparent on how you’d vet or sift the initial applications. That doesn’t mean to introduce new “high bars” just to reduce the number, it means to be clear about the checklist you’d use to classify those who get to the next round.

What I have seen is some minor resume CAPTCHA in the job description, like "answer 7 + 12 in your cover letter" or something similar.

I imagine that will filter out a good swath of robo-submitters as well as those with low attention to detail (but maybe not the chatGPT responders).