I've got to agree with you. I recently started getting serious about changing positions and I've become completely convinced that much of the so-called 'talent shortage' is caused by the job search process, from job listings through to interviews. Every step is unintentionally outrageous in a new way.
The first step, finding open positions that are appropriate to your skills and abilities, is overwhelming and impossible. The only way you have any hope of short circuiting it is to have connections with the right people who can open the maze from the inside. Or to become famous in a community.
Otherwise, it's a slog of browsing through hundreds of job listings, finding the one in 20 that isn't for .NET or MS-SQL or C# or Oracle, and the 1 in 50 that's not from a recruiter who's listed the same job 5 times, realizing that you aren't qualified because you haven't used the all 4 languages they care about, or maybe because you've only dabbled with some key piece of tech they're convinced you need 3 years experience with, or they won't look at candidates who need to relocate, or you absolutely need to know Red Hat when you've pretty much used Ubuntu derivatives or Arch or whatever. Then you waste time adjusting your resume, and never hear back.
Those you do hear back from will often mis-represent themselves and their businesses in an attempt to get hires. In fact, I was a victim of this at my current job.
Oh well.
All I need to do is start spending all my evenings and weekends on side projects while building an impressive blog to talk about coding and technology. Once it's popular with the Hacker New digerati all I'll need to do is wait... After all, we all know 'talent' is code for 'marketing.'