As someone applying right now I agree. I think I've had one company out of dozens get back to me on a cold application this year. Every contact that has led to an interview was from being referred in by a current employee, or a LinkedIn recruiter reaching out to me about a job. I assume the application forms get spammed with hundreds if not thousands of applicants. It's hard to blame someone for not wanting to sift through all that muck when there's already a stream of vetted candidates coming in from their recruiter. Sucks for the job seekers, though.

I'm putting more time into cleaning up my LinkedIn profile since that's been my most reliable route into hiring pipelines (other than referrals and networking).

My experience recently was something like 2/3 from referrals (the third I think will eventually get back to me but way too slow), and something like 3/10 from cold applications. Obviously big differences depending on location and experience but I was pleasantly surprised that some of the cold applications went somewhere.