Ask HN: Outsourced HR as an indicator of company quality?

If you take Craigslist's word for it, companies all over are using Jobvite, Captain Recruiter, Brassring, and others as their first point-of-contact for prospective employees.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Should I be forced to participate in and support a third-party's business model in order to get a job that appears to be a good fit for mutual benefit? Frankly, it casts a pall over the company as a whole for me, and doesn't leave me with the feeling that the management is engaged with staffing. I imagine them sitting back and checking their phones for whatever list of applicants have jumped through the hoops the outsourced HR agency requires. If I actually went through the process I dread that it would just be a rehash of DICE-type forms and a worry that I will soon be inundated by recruiters. I don't think it's controversial to note the past techniques of HR/staffing agencies.

There are enough companies doing their own hiring to tell me we're not quite at the "take it and like it," step of the game, but there are a worrying number of seemingly-decent companies using these services, so I have to wonder if I'm just clueless. Is there a feature, aspect, or quality here that I'm missing that could help me be more OK with this state of affairs? What is the benefit for me?