Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

I'm about a year into a mid-effort level job search. I work in a somewhat specialized technical field and am fairly senior (I think in FAANG-ese I'd be an maybe an L7 if I understand their levels correctly). So this means I'm looking for management, director, deputy CTO or CTO positions depending on the company. I have a track record making my company lots of money, and opening up new opportunities worth many multiples of that. So the deck is already stacked against me as most positions are for jr or mid engineers, but I have a proven track record of growing responsibilities and (in my market) fairly recognizable success stories.

The search has been absolutely atrocious. Unlike anything I've ever seen before in 30 years of working in tech.

* I used to be able to simply pull on my network and get a position within 2 or 3 tries. Total job hunt time, under a month.

* The last time I had to go through this was pre-COVID, and I used a mix of my network and cold applications (around 50). I only heard back from 2 of the cold submissions and my network pulled me in to where I am today. Total job hunt time, around 4 months.

* I'm almost exactly 1 year in now, over 700 applications, people in my network can't even get responses for referrals. I've made it to 4 interview funnels, including stupidly exhausting FAANGs, for positions ranging from CTO to consultant filling a contract slot. 2 solid offers, both at least 40-60% below my current market rate. One executive recruiter ghosted me after we started discussing Total Compensation Packages.

I even had a friend post a position at their company, using my resume as the hiring template. Then they personally referred me to that position. I never received a call, and they never received any candidates.

It feels like being personally blacklisted, but it's affecting everybody I know.

The furthest I've gotten has been by hunting down corporate and executive recruiters directly, but I've had two recruiters get laid off halfway through the matching process. One FAANG recruiter has even contacted me hoping I could help them find a position.

Something is broken somewhere. Companies are starving for talent, and talent is starving for companies. The online applications sites are clearly filtering out people, but there appears to be massive churn in the recruiting side as well.

/r/recruitinghell is very representative of things I've seen.

I did notice that hiring activity has picked up since the rollover of the FY. Several 6-7 month old applications stirred somebody to contact me in the last month or so with a "great fit" that turned out to have nothing to do with my skillset.

My story is finally drawing to a close however, I've just negotiated a good position at a new firm and am setting a start date.