I’ve seen this happen to people. You get depressed and focus on sites like Monster/etc that are mostly bullshit generic posts and agencies trolling for resumes. No interviews because there are no jobs.
I tried to use as broad a range of places as I could find. I bought the Guardian every Thursday for the ads in the Tech pull-out, until they cancelled that. I subscribed to Computing and Computer Weekly and went for any print ads in there, too. I applied to a few from New Scientist as well, borrowing friends' copies or going to the local libraries.
There are indubitably many ads for each role, and also fake ads for agencies wanting lots of people on their books, but you can't really tell real from spam, so I just applied for them all.
A few questions:
1. How many events do you attend per week? (could be related to any industry at all - could be a tradeshow, a panel of speakers, tech meetups - anything really)?
2. How many hands do you shake at each event?
3. How many people from these events do you follow up with?
If your score is "0" for all of the above then you are doing it all wrong.
You need to meet people in person, each week. The only way to do that short of showing up at the front desk, resume in hand, is to go to events.
You need to set a goal of attending 1-2 events per week (minimum), and figuring out how to get in front of hiring managers from companies you admire.
Figure out what events those people might attend socially or professionally. Get up to speed with events in various industries in your city.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable at events, and find a way to make them enjoyable.
People who log facetime at events do immediately jump to the top of the pile compared to people like you who are #200-300 at the bottom of the stack in the applicant tracking system for some BS job posting on Monster (many of which are for non-existent jobs).
Don't be #300.
Start attending events!
There's no reason you should have to apply for 3,000 jobs, that is a waste of time.
Start working smarter - even if you are introverted and awkward in person.
Now pick your head, up, get out there and get started!
You can do this!
D.
90% of all successful placements come from people who have personal contacts with the hiring manager or somewhere else at the place doing the hiring.
90% of the remainder (9% of the total) come from headhunting firms that are actively looking for candidates to fill a particular special position.
The final 1% comes from placement advertisements and job search facilities.
And this from the lady who ran the job search facility for the University of Oklahoma (at Norman), called the “Job Location Program”. It covered every single staff and faculty position that was being hired for across the entire University.
So far as I can tell, the job placement situation hasn’t really changed much in the 30 or so years since.
So, you have to ask yourself, where do you want to spend your time and money? Do you want to spend it all in the area with only 1% placement success, or do you want to spend it somewhere else that might have a higher probability of getting you something?