No Soliciting?

Just something I'm curious about....Do people solicit academic employment? By solicit, I mean the following scenario: no position is advertised (or necessarily open), yet a job candidate forwards a dossier to a school in the hopes that he/she might be considered "available" if something should come up.

If this sort of thing happens, do you think people have any success at this? Does it depend on the kind of school being solicited? For example, what about a small school in Town that Attracts Nobody (located in State Where Many Don't Want to Live), which would consider a candidate from a strong R1 school a "good hire"?

Does this kind of thing happen only in my tiny imagination? I'm sure it does...