A friend of mine posted this on Facebook.  As someone who returned to America recently, and am currently on the job hunt, this post really struck a chord with me.  Link to the original post HERE.  

Based on my job hunt in the last couple months, I can personally attest to points number 2 and 3 in particular.  

Actually I haven't experienced the "ten-minute timeout" he mentions.  (The websites I've been using allow you to take your time, and even save your progress and come back later.)  But I have experienced the large amount of time it takes to fill in these applications on the employer websites.  I have spent hours filling out applications on various websites.  And each application can easily take me 3-4 hours to complete.

What gets me is all the information they want about former employers.  Am I supposed to enter my whole work history, or just the last 10 years?  They don't say anything about time limit, so I guess they want my whole work history.

And then a lot of these website asks for address, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc for all the places you've ever worked for.  So I spend like 20 minutes trying to hunt down the telephone number for a place I worked for 20 years ago.

(Of course, I've eventually started doing the sensible thing, and started trying to organize all my employment history on a Google doc for ease of reference when I fill out these thing.  I wish I had had the sense to create this Google doc right at the beginning, because now I'm having to look up some numbers and addresses twice.  But I guess you live and learn.)

And then, as the original poster mentions in point 3, for most of these applications, I just never hear back anything at all.