That's a different thing to applying to 'public' jobs ads, which often have an AI discard most applications, then they just throw 50% in file 13, filter another 50% with stupid questions, and so on, and that's even if the job is real.
The same as for the freelancer sites; there's a high chance your applications won't even be read, so it's really not worth spending quality time on them.
If you can, getting a job through personal connections and networking has always yielded the best results for both parties in my experience. In 20 years, only my first graduate job didn’t come this way.
I also saw no mention of speaking to an actual recruiter/headhunter, which is the only way other than the aforementioned personal intros and networking that I/we have hired anyone with 15 years of experience that I can remember.
I’m not surprised it took 450 attempts.
What if you recently changed specialization, or moved city or even country? What if it's been a few years since you were in actual employment, you were working on startups, or had a career break or whatever. What if you have way more than 15 years experience. And so many other situations, which might result in your network being limited or not that good for finding the kind of work you want.
The point is, if you apply to advertised jobs, it's a numbers game.
As a hiring manager now, I hate, hate, hate the spray and pray applicants. Wastes a vast amount of my time weeding them out. And I'm probably rejecting actually good candidates now, as I just immediately reject anyone who doesn't seem to have thought even a little about the position they're applying for.
The point of the comments here is that things ARE different today.
I would never have imagined that "AI resume" would be a good idea, but ...
Looking at the posts on HN from the hiring side, total cheats are making it past the screening regularly. There's a lot of problems in the hiring process right now, and they aren't just from the economic downturn.
People who need jobs (or want different jobs) have to play the game with the current rules, not wait around for the rules to change (again).
Of course, if you don't have a network, that's probably not a great place to be in absent credentials that make you stand out.
But nobody in my network of ~100 is in either situation. They are either also jobless, or their company is not hiring or, what they are hiring for is not applicable to me (such as wrong role/country/TZ/stack).
I can't hire those people, they're unlucky