a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker
Did your resume have "NOT AVAILABLE FOR WORK BEFORE [MONTH]/[DAY]/[YEAR], AFTER WHICH I AM AVAILABLE" written across the top in red ink?
Presumably not. But, if not (and maybe even if so!) it would take way more time and skill for a human to (a) read your resume, (b) parse it, and (c) deduce that you were not available than for someone to type your contact phone number into a call-center system, awaiting the day when another human would deploy automated call-center software to place a call to you, ask "might you be available for a contract on date X?", and note down your answer.
The other problem, of course, is that it's incredibly easy to represent a phone number in a database, and it's fairly easy to represent "we called Prospect X about Potential Contract Y but she said no" in a database, but it is awfully hard to represent "Prospect X has a resume which suggests that he will graduate on date Z, and most likely that means he isn't available before date Z, unless he is down on his luck or has gotten bored with school or we misread the resume" in a database.
Did your resume have "NOT AVAILABLE FOR WORK BEFORE [MONTH]/[DAY]/[YEAR], AFTER WHICH I AM AVAILABLE" written across the top in red ink?
Presumably not. But, if not (and maybe even if so!) it would take way more time and skill for a human to (a) read your resume, (b) parse it, and (c) deduce that you were not available than for someone to type your contact phone number into a call-center system, awaiting the day when another human would deploy automated call-center software to place a call to you, ask "might you be available for a contract on date X?", and note down your answer.
The other problem, of course, is that it's incredibly easy to represent a phone number in a database, and it's fairly easy to represent "we called Prospect X about Potential Contract Y but she said no" in a database, but it is awfully hard to represent "Prospect X has a resume which suggests that he will graduate on date Z, and most likely that means he isn't available before date Z, unless he is down on his luck or has gotten bored with school or we misread the resume" in a database.