[pandaman]

The problem is that for every Joe who has no experience but can program there are 100s others who have no experience and cannot program. You will learn this as soon as you decide to hire a junior and teach him or her. And then what will you do?

Even phone screening takes time. It might take just as little as 5 minutes to fail somebody on a phone screen but with all the set up and scheduling you are unlikely to process more than a dozen screens per day per interviewer. And people passing such a short phone screen are not guaranteed to be fit even for a junior position. A face to face interview takes even more time and money. Eventually you need to cut your costs.

As for the observation that most vacancies have hard requirements... The vacancies that don't get closed very quickly so the most vacancies you see are the ones that are looking for people who are hard to find.