PERM ade sense in a theoretical world without H1s or F1s, where you are filing PERM for someone off the street. But that almost never happens outside of cases where yes, you coud put the ad in the front page NYT and you'd still hire the candidate. And thus eitehr way you slice it, looking at the resumes of your ghost ad is a waste of time either way.
And if one really wanted to go back to that kind of green card process, it has to be very fast anyway, instead of being as slow as it is. Otherwise it becomes useless regardless.
If it's a given that "nobody else will be more qualified", then they aren't making a good-faith effort, are they.
it should be before you can go looking to hire somebody on a work visa, rather than to keep somebody you hired on a work visa