Academic Double-Dipping: Professional Profit or Loss?

In my three decades in the profession I have served on an uncountable number of search committees. In recent years I increasingly encountered an annoying (to me) practice among applicants, multiple vita entries for identically titled, and thus presumably identically written, conference papers. I originally dismissed such practices as vita padding, a not well socialized, nor particularly well accomplished, applicant seeking to make his or her research performance look more impressive than it actually is.