This process is painful for everyone.

The pain is mutual; hiring managers don't like this much more than you do.  If you see a job posting online, or in the newspaper, you are seeing someone's plea for help.  Someone somewhere is over worked!  They need help, and they have convinced their company to allow them to hire someone to alleviate some of their workload.   On top of all this work, they now have to find more time in their constricted schedule,  to interview a group of people and hopefully select a fabulous person who is going to solve all of their problems.

Interviewing (by the way)  is also a task most hiring managers have never been trained in, and have very little comfort doing.  Then they have to convince a group of their peers and counterparts to agree on their choice of candidate, and then they have to negotiate to ensure they secure the candidate for a reasonable salary.  This is a formidable amount of work for someone who is already overworked.

Try to understand the sort of person you're going to be meeting when you apply for jobs, who's problem you are trying to solve, and who you are going to be sitting across from when you interview.  If you put yourself in their shoes, it's kinda like imagining the audience in their underwear! :)  You can see that they are usually as vulnerable as you are, and are just looking to solve a problem...