Self directed learner is not the same as someone willing to spend several hours on a lottery ticket for an interview. The cost of applying for this role is 100x higher than most other jobs.
So the independent thinkers did some thinking and realized that their expected return from this process wasn't that high.
Also corps fail to realize that most people arent interested in the actual corp work but rather niche stuff that isn't as marketable. Why would people go out of their way to apply to some corp job?
OP here. What we hope the independent thinks will realize is that when the cost of applying drops down to a single automatable click, their cursory click application is lost in a sea of spam. This allows them to stand apart. Recruiting and dating have a tone of parallels. They are time-intensive for both parties. And that time spent does not always result in a positive outcome. And yet that high time-cost (for both sides) is what makes the relationship meaningful.
Here's a question. In a difficult job market with a deluge of candidates, how should a candidate try and stand apart? And we have to answer that for the new AI age where output for many tests can generated very cheaply.
Do the type of project you specified, but unprompted for companies that did not request it, meaning a higher delta between you and other candidates. Because you are defining the project rather than them, you can also heavily recycle it within the same industry, so it still stands out as impressive but also scales reasonably well. You can also do it with ChatGPT quickly and it is not noticeably messy AI work because there is nothing to compare your work with. Your work stands out to for its quality, but for existing.
I did this back when I was an intern for an innovation role and got it.
Did a bit of consulting for others on this years ago as well. A remnant of that time:
So the independent thinkers did some thinking and realized that their expected return from this process wasn't that high.