Oh my Celestia! I recall hearing that stuff while I had my office job during the past year.
I was recently laid off and it's certainly a pain to apply for jobs during this time. I am finding that a lot of roles follow the same process: "fill out the job app, upload your resume, cover letter, school transcripts, more questions, then for the last 5-10 questions write 250-500 word short form essays on questions regarding why you would be a good fit for the job". Then I would get a rejection response within a week or less. That or they ghost you and waste your time. I heard some people don't get a response until a year later stating that they did not get the job.
What I have learned to do and recommend to people is that if you find a job that is asking you to write an essay or anything like that - get an AI program to write responses for you. Just make sure to tailor the prompt with your experience and voila. Using AI saved me a lot of time and the jobs that I did that for recently landed me two interviews.