Yeah, job applications haven’t changed that much.

It was still a dismissive black box, it’s just that the process was more manual. Instead of AI tools throwing your application away, someone skimmed it looking for a particular bullet point, if they don’t find it in 10 seconds your resume is tossed in the bin. Whether it was AI or a manager, either way you’re probably not getting a call back to let you know they tossed your application.

The manual review though does improve your odds than an algorithm looking for keywords.

Not to mention sometimes you got feedback of what your odds were of getting hired. If you gave someone your physical resumé, and they just laid it down in a random spot and we’re dismissive, you at least knew immediately that you should probably not expect a call back.