In my experience, the most effective way to minimize the odds of a company never responding is to identify someone who works at that company who either you know personally (best) or they know someone you know and you ask for an intro. This allows you to skip the online application black hole. As a corollary, invest in your network and keep good relationships with former coworkers.
Yeah, I really can’t imagine cold applying for a place at this point in my career. I got my first job via a recruiter, every job since has been working with people I worked with previously.
This person sounds like they have been in the field for quite a while (since the dotcom bubble, at least), but still mostly did cold interviews? I have been in the field for a bit less time (a little more than 15 years), but I have dozens of former coworkers I would go through before going to cold interviewing. I wonder why they didn’t rely on their network more.
Anecdotally, I've been through ~10 employers in my ~30 years and about half were "cold applies" and the other half I was recruited in by former contacts. By far, the better experiences have been with the cold apply companies than the "already had a foot in the door" companies.
