I think software developers have a very interesting relationship with the hiring process - there's an unspoken attitude that our skills are highly in demand, so therefore companies should be trying to hire us rather than us trying to get a job with a company.

In reality, while software development skills are in high demand, there's also a very high supply segmented across different skillsets and industries (and yes, in lots of industries being a software and domain SME is important). Companies have had lots of success using take home projects or short assessments for technical skills like HackerRank to separate both the wheat from the chaff and remove those who don't want that particular role that much (as you said).