Why your time is too valuable to be spent interviewing

Apply for jobs you don't want, get some practice interviewing

Sound familiar?  Maybe you've had some friends give you this advice.

It's bad advice. Maybe it worked once when the typical role had 30-40 applications.

Now companies get hundreds of applicants for a role, and getting in front of a decisionmaker is exceptionally difficult. "Apply for jobs you don't want, and get practice interviewing" is advice you should follow if you want to waste a lot of time for jobs you'll never reach the interview stage for, and then find yourself getting bounced by recruiters at the screening stage before even speaking with a hiring manager.