It's far simpler than that. Everyone person in a position to make a hire has potentially irrational but commonly effective "cues" they use to sniff out if a candidate is a bad idea.

Such cues would be carelessness, lack of attention to detail, poor handwriting, anything that suits the fancy of the person doing the observing really.

As someone who's doing some casual sniffing about, I do the same thing. If I see indications that the company isn't the kind of place I'd enjoy working for, I figure it's cheaper/easier for me to never even bother than to potentially get into a position that makes me unhappy.

That is, if I see a job posting rife with misspellings (not that this one was, just an example), that requires PDF/DOC resume uploading (guilty, in this case, which is surprising on HN), or that is asking for more years of experience in a language that hasn't existed that long.

(I'm looking forward to the MINIMUM 5 YEARS OF CLOJURE EXPERIENCE posts)

They tripped a wire. I gave them a chance to explain/correct/laugh-with-me. None happened, instead I trigger the hypocritical and self-righteous horde of hackerne.ws

So the employer is allowed to have standards but I am not. Yeah, I see how it is.

I'd rather start my own company than deal with people who can retain that magnitude of cognitive dissonance and remain outwardly functional.