My own employment history in the past 10 years or so clearly demonstrates this is not the case. Companies I have worked on spent at least days, if not weeks before approaching me with a job offer (and no recruiters, direct contact from my future manager). A job they needed done, and a job they clearly understood I was an expert in.

I am am talking about senior-level jobs here, where the employee is hired because of his specific skill set and expertise in some particular domain. If the company does something that doesn't require any particular expertise, and no particular skill set, or if they don't know what they need, yeah... I don't want to be working there. Why would I? I would be selling myself short, and I would not advance in my technical career.

Companies can very well assess whether someone is interested in the job. They can't know without asking if someone is willing to tolerate the company, but they should be able to tell whether someone would likely be interested in a particular job. And if someone likes a job, most likely they won't mind the company, so it's worthwhile for the company to reach out.

Companies should also be able to assess with good reliability how qualified is someone for a particular job before contacting that person. If they can't, they either don't know what they need, or they are looking at the wrong person to hire.

> Companies I have worked on spent at least days, if not weeks before approaching me with a job offer (and no recruiters, direct contact from my future manager).

I'm honestly curious what they would have done during that time. I mean, are you literally saying it took them days or weeks of constant analysis to decide whether to approach you about coming in for an interview?

And I'm not going to invest hours in them unless they're minimally interested.

I'm pretty sure that in a world populated entirely by people like you, the only thing that would cause anyone to ever actually become employed would be some confusion over what "minimally interested" means.

Well, when the recruiter emails, and says that they're interested in my skills, I'd like to believe that they're not full of crap, and that they actually have looked at some version of my resume.

I'd like to think that when they email and invite me to a local event, it's in a city I've been associated with before, not somewhere across the country, when I live in the same city as the HQ.

I'd like to think that when I've spent an hour on the phone, they at least let me know that they're interested or not, not just go completely silent.

Or, same deal after an onsite.