Comment by mothballed

This seems to vary based on what stage of your career you are in.

Early career when I realized trying the 1000th way to make myself seem better than all the other college graduates with the same qualifications I gave up targetting and just sprayed and prayed and got jobs that way through pure lottery luck of ending up randomly on the pile at a moment when the company was too exhausted because they lost their preferred candidate at the last minute or something like that. I basically put in so many apps that the 1 in 1 million chance happened that I was an unremarkable cog that showed up at the right place at the right time.

By mid career when I actually had something worth anything to anyone then spray and pray was no longer necessary and targetting an application could actually be effective.