As someone who is currently applying to jobs, this is a very important question and the answers are, unfortunately, exactly what I expected: everyone's experience and suggestions are totally different.

Which sucks, because I really wanted to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm still fairly new to the field, and I don't have a vast network to tap into (which is what it seems like most people here prefer to do).

So here I am, thinking that my resume/CV is actually starting to look nice (PhD in a hard science where I spent the whole time doing/writing Monte Carlo simulations and analyzing data, plus 1.5 years at a tech startup doing backend and Android dev, plus proficiency in many languages, SQL, etc), and I'm getting almost no interest in my applications. I had one local guy contact me and one corporate job that made me take an SAT-style online test and a "personality test" that I guess I failed because I haven't heard back after that.

I think I've sent out nearly 30 applications in the last couple of months. I've been mostly sending them out via Indeed and WeWorkRemotely.com. Is this field really that competitive? I'm not even getting to the "perform like a trained monkey" interview questions- I don't get any responses at all!

I can't imagine that my cover letters are all _that_ bad. I mean, I try to customize them to each job. I try to keep them brief.

It's just all really, really discouraging.