Applicants in general I feel are always to be on a disadvantage because most companies leave the hiring to the HR Department, who have very little clue on what they need to actually be looking. Most of the time, they would have a checklist, where if the person does not meet enough of their threshold, that person is immediately passed off for the next applicant.

Add the process that some folks do to screen candidates - lots of times, these are not objective in nature and tend to skew towards most applicants who seem to have a very impressive profile made up of fancy words and half truths.