Usually because a cold online application enters a very large pile in front of a very busy human, and silence is the default outcome for most of the pile. It is rarely a machine verdict. The exception is knockout questions, which reject instantly, not silently.
The uncomfortable arithmetic is attention, not automation. The first scan from a recruiter runs about 7 seconds per resume, per a Ladders eye-tracking study, and a resume that opens with a generic summary spends its whole audience warming up.
The strongest fix has nothing to do with software: referred candidates reach the interview stage at roughly 40 times the rate of cold applicants. Ask a human inside the company before or right after you apply. Meanwhile, keep the resume parse-clean and posting-matched so searches can still surface you.
“Silence is not the machine plotting against you, it is a pile of resumes taller than the afternoon anyone has for it.”
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