If you've done good work for a few decades, you have tons of former coworkers willing to hire you.

Yes, they refer me to their corporate recruiter and what happens next is "sorry, that's how the process is, we can't change it" :-)

Agree completely. Reach out to prior managers that you respected and would want to work with again. In the past decade, I’ve worked with the same manager across 3 different companies. All without a loop.