I'd wager this is ~90% of the problem with the modern day employment market. Monster et al made it too easy to apply for a job. Now every position gets 1000 applicants and every applicant applies for 100 jobs. The applicant thinks the more they apply, the better their chances. The employer thinks there is a cookie cutter, definition employee out there that will fit 110%, be overqualified, and willing to work for less because the applicant won't get any of the other 100 jobs they shotgunned. The employer passes on applicant after applicant and waits until they find the 10x employee. The applicants move on to their next 100 cover letters.
Monster and other job listing sites are mostly just recruitment agency spam trying to get someone to bite. Well at least in the IT industry anyway.
Actually that's probably the symptom of what you're describing, companies no longer manage recruitment internally anymore, instead throwing the responsibility to the hyenas snapping below and hoping they can buffer out most of the shit
I graduated in the dot.com bust of 2001, and it took me over a year to get a permanent position. I applied for a lot of jobs in that time. There were two types of application - CV and cover letter. Of the graduate recruitment scheme form, full of crap like "give an example of when you showed leadership in difficult circumstances". Those forms would usually take the best part of a day to fill out. Whereas I could adjust my cover letter to maybe ten or more jobs in the same time period.
So I probably sent in 10-20 times more CV applications, but I got a far better response rate from the application forms. Maybe recruiters know this, and use it as an early for of filtering.
