[stevejabs]

From personal experience, don't apply to any positions that don't reveal the company name in the post. You'll rarely get anywhere, and when you do it will likely not even pan out to being who you want to work for or the job that was described.

What I normally do is this:

Find a job that you find unique or intriguing. If it has a company name attached I immediately jump to LinkedIn to find who I may be working for and if it's the small company, I just look up the CEO.

At this point, I start following the CEO on Twitter (if they have one) and I find out what they are interested in and post about. I will now usually start engaging that person every now and then to make them put a name to a face. This also allows you to get an idea of the personality of the person you may be working for.

After a while, I'll put the question out there, "Hey I saw that you posted Foo job at your company. Has this position been filled? I'm extremely interested."

If they don't have Twitter, I'll engage them straight through LinkedIn. At this point I'll be straight upfront and honest. Just tell them that you are interested in finding out more information about the company before you formally apply for the job. When the time comes, try and get your resume straight to their personal email via this conversation.

Open up a line of dialog with someone who is posted the job. If it's an HR department, it may be tough, but not impossible. It's worth it in the long run to build up connections (even if their virtual) with people. Blindly applying to positions is just going to leave you in the dark.

EDIT: Grammar

[danmaz74]

Out of curiosity, how many times did you do that? And how many jobs did you find?

[stevejabs]

This method has worked for me 3 times now. I turned down one of the opportunities. Not necessarily the best sample size, but the method shows very clearly that you intend to work for that company or at least that you are extremely interested in going the extra mile.

[pawelwentpawel]

Imagine CEO's life if all of the 623 job seekers would apply this method.

[wtracy]

I highly doubt that there would still be 623 job seekers applying if this much work were involved.