5 apps with 2 responses, and locally? You’re doing really well. Seriously. It sounds like you are qualified enough to get what you want, and the number of responses already is a very good sign.

Small rant:

My experience: a Ph.D., two years applying through Indeed/LinkedIn/directly, several rounds of professional development to overhaul networking approaches/resumes, maybe 150 applications, and I maybe hear back in a couple months with a form letter rejection. The few interviews I’ve had were either a company looking for a unicorn (or just lying about a position), something that lead to a task-based assessment, or a goddamn AI-analyzed one-way interview which is the biggest red flag.

Tl;dr it’s really bad out there, and you honestly have great results so far, even if it doesn’t seem like it! All the best to you, and I hope you find something you’ll enjoy.

Your job isn't your worth or your life. So balance searching with your mental health. If a particular position has burned out two people already you don't want it unless the money is good enough.

I'd also caution you to be defensive with your time, it takes employers five seconds to send you a test or battery of tests that will take five hours to do, don't sink an unreasonable amount of time into one or ask for a meeting to get to know the team before committing too much effort - most serious offers will be amenable to that while H1-B fakeouts or "We have an internal candidate in mind" will stone wall you. The job market fucking sucks both because employers are lazy bitches and because the chatgpt resume spam is real - when hiring for a devops our company had hundreds of applications and like three real candidates.

I wish you the best of luck!

The 2 principles I stick to are.

1. Job hunting is a numbers game, just like any sales job. Don't take rejection personally, just move on to the next one.
2. Don't get excited about a job until you have a signed contract. Just apply / interview, and forget about it until the next stage happens.

Number 2 is hard to do sometimes, but worth doing whenever possible.

I spent about a year looking for a job (senior management in cybersecurity), and had basically ZERO luck until I got wise and did the following. Had a new role within 4 months afterwards.

1. Take your resume, and expand it 10-20x into a massive document listing every single project, accomplishment, or skill you can think of that could ever be potentially relevant in a new role.
2. Every time you apply to a new job, copy the job posting into a ChatGPT conversation, and have it edit your resume to a 1-2 page document that only includes the experience most relevant to the job posting, and to rewrite sentences to use the exact terminology from the job posting where appropriate.
3. Once you have the custom resume, use ChatGPT to generate a custom cover letter to include as well.

These 2 changes will cause your resume to get assigned a higher "relevance score" by the AI tool their HR or recruiting team uses to weed through the 400+ applications they receive, which means you'll be at the top of the list of names that gets delivered to first human in the process (the recruiter).

You'll actually start getting callbacks and phone screens at that point, which gives you a fighting chance. The rest is up to you.

There are paid services that'll do this for you (like Teal), but you can do it yourself and with more control as long as you have access to ChatGPT. If you can generate a completely customized resume and cover letter in less than 2 minutes, you can pump out 10 high-quality applications in less than half an hour per day.

Edit: I see you're getting a 40% response rate. You may be setting your sights too low if that remains consistent. If you're applying for roles that are a solid step up form where you're at, you would expect closer to a 10% response rate.

Apply for Civil Service jobs.

You won't get hired quickly, but the jobs come with great benefits and strong unions.

I sent 4-8 tailored applications every weekend for over 6 months to find my current role. Background is an accredited Bachelors in Engineering with several years experience for context.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint - 2 real leads in 5 apps is incredible.

What you’re asking is how to internalize the reality of living under late stage capitalism. There is no easy answer to be provided here.

Personally, already being in a shit role helped motivate me to keep building my resume, taking on even more projects, and keep hunting.

It makes it even funnier when they see this dedicated incredible profitable hard worker turn in their two weeks out of the blue. Last time I did it, two warehouses had to close because the replacement was not up to par and they lost the account lmfao.

those are rookie numbers. you gotta pump those way up.

first find your geographic fantasy area. like it would be a huge bonus to work in that area, maybe <7 minutes from home.. go aggressive on that area, even if they don't have a job posted, just reach out anyway and follow up 3 days later.

then look for remote of any type, if your home life is conducive to it. even if its not your ideal industry or position, people are drastically happier with the work/life balance.

then of course within your industry and position matches go for broke. even if its out of your area, ask if they would consider you remote. don't assume anything.

I personally have had the best luck finding jobs on indeed. Its a popular job board for a reason but that doesnt mean that there arent a ton of postings from companies that arent actually looking for employees. Its super shitty of them but work with what ya got.

I avoid any job posting that has weird requirements like they want you to take a test or want you to add your resume through thier website instead. I dont reccomend wasting your time with that unless the job posting looks really worth it. Rarely they are. I get the most rejections from those.

What i recommend most is trying to get a job in the same field or company that a friend works at. Much easier to get hired if someone can vouch for you. Thats how i got my current job. Before that, i was stuck in security and constantly job hunting with no return on investment.

Antidepressants.