Any company who think they are hiring the top 1% are deluded or maybe microsoft. Any company that actually try and really hire the top 1% are heading for swift bankruptcy - you can't afford to take the time and effort to get "the best" of anything in business; you have to go with something that's good and fast.

But people do give up after a while if they can't get anywhere (especially in academia). Maybe you can help overcome the bias if there is some way of measuring how often people have applied in the past?