Ask HN: Anyone else finding it impossible to land a job?

I was unemployed for six months in 2023. Some of that duration was self-induced. My wife did not want to relocate across the country and I did not want to go back to being a junior web developer, or senior positions that sounded very junior, as I have 20 years experience. Fortunately, I landed two opportunities unrelated to writing JavaScript at once and I took the lower paying one because it was fully remote.

Here is a list of things not to do:

* Don't waste time using employer online career portals. These only continue to exist to satisfy EEO legal requirements. Most employers don't respond to these.

* Don't pad your resume. Make every line of your resume count as if it were being read by a human. With AI tools now filtering resumes they are getting better at bullshit detection.

Things to do:

* Upload your resume to places like Indeed, Zip Recruiter, Dice.

* Be very specific on your resume. Yes, you should state something about your tech stack in the fewest possible words, but anything related to competences should be expressed in quantifiable terms only. For example you saved the company billions of dollars, or shipped 200 features to production, or reduced execution speed by 50%

* Be clear about your experience and what you are looking for.

* Have external credentials like PMP, CISSP, security clearance, and more. These open doors for you that you currently don't realize are closed to you and likely pay more.

Listing an active US security clearance on your LinkedIn or resume, is a sure fire way to get malicious actors trying to "hire" you; and makes you way more of a target. Especially combined with your technologies, company and time frame worked... It's just realy bad idea.

No, just no.

I'm long-time unemployed, had my last interview in Dec 2025. But what I can tell you is that during my interviews I get a lot of questions regarding numbers like: "how did you get to $X mio ARR, saved Y% on the data ingestion pipeline, or decreased processing algorithm speed by Z mins?"

Don't do that!

Everybody is trying to "quantify" their resume but hiring managers are calling the bluff. It's straight out lying, they smell your BS.

Speaking of lying: I get a lot of input from my peers how to actually make it to the next round of an interview process. Across the board they advised me to inflate my expertise of skill XYZ, if asked. Speaking humbly about yourself is not recommended - quite the contrary: brag, but keep it vague and very brief. I never had to do this in the past but now it's almost required.

Shameless plug: If you have any leads that help me secure a full-time position as Solutions Architect (or the like) you won't be disappointed - I'm a fast learner, taking on the toughest challenges! Now that all my savings are gone, I finally need find some work - maybe with your help? Thank you!

Yes, of course, DO NOT LIE on your resume. DO NOT exaggerate, bend the truth, or other shenanigans, This is not an excuse to avoid quantifying your contributions though.

If it's not BS, there's nothing to smell.

Some people genuinely have increased revenue by 40% in a department, on their own. I know, because they were my direct reports, and I was more than happy to clear away roadblocks for them to continue doing the same thing at higher and higher levels.

The issue is that no one wants to say their part was only 0.02%, so they take credit for the job the team as a whole did.

> production, or reduced execution speed by 50%

Hopefully that's "reduced execution time" :)

Had a look at your resume: https://resume.kurtisknodel.com/. I'm struggling to figure out what you're good at; is it C#, is it PHP, is it React, or is it something else. I'm suspicious of the 7-years programming exp as well; the freelancing gigs with little specifics seem to do the heavy lifting for that statement.

Are you going for junior dev roles? If you're not getting them, maybe consider applying to tech adjacent roles (IT, customer support at tech companies, etc)?

mmarian is right. OP I'd honestly dispense with some of the numbers - they're weirdly specific and probably have the opposite of the intended effect, like:

> Networked with clients to expand potential clientele to over 7+ people

... so 8?

Your résumé shows that your first tech job started in January 2022. If you’ve been unemployed for 1.5 years as of January 2026, then your max amount of professional experience (which is most employers really care about) can really only be ~2.5 years.

Technical skills:

> Git

> Software Development

Listing Git is like listing VS Code - it’s too basic to be worth mentioning. Use that space to highlight more valuable skills. The same goes for listing “software development” as a skill; it’s assumed if you’re applying in the IT industry.

Good luck on your search~

The "7+" clients thing is actually "more than 7 but I keep getting new clients and don't want to update my resume every time", but I get how that comes across.

For the max professional exp: does freelancing not count? I was making bank in high school, so I figured if I'm doing contract work for employers and making money, then it's professional, no? (naturally freelance isn't going so well now, otherwise I wouldn't be looking for a job)

Otherwise that all makes sense, thanks for the feedback! :)

Hey, thanks for taking a look!

> I'm struggling to figure out what you're good at

Can it not be all of them? :p

That's one of my big challenges with resumes. People assume I can only be good at one thing and/or assume that I'm lying about my work experience.

I can get _really good_ references from all of my previous employers (because I am legitimately good at everything on my resume), but I never seem to get to that point.

Historically, if I get a technical interview, I get the job every time. The challenge is getting the technical interview.

The more broad and general the claim of value the heavier burden there is on trust.

It's the same for products. Products with very narrow niche value props are immediately attractive to the few people with those specific needs. When you sound like everything to everyone, people are naturally less likely to believe you and the only way around that is a strong recommendation/referral. (Not a name you list on resume, but someone the hiring person trusts saying "you should really consider hiring this person, they are exceptional").

The more specifically relevant you can be to their needs, the more you will stand out.

This is as true for products as it is for resumes, especially when considering that people "hire" products.

I agree with the other respondent. I’d go as far as to say your resume is bad. All I got from it is that you went to university and have some backend experience and also game development experience. I would have passed on your resume if it had been submitted to a job I was hiring for. There is not even a GitHub link.

A person should be able to look at your resume and visualise what you have done and what you could do for them. What game(s) did you work on? What PHP frameworks did you work with? What were the internal tools you built?

“We need someone to do x, is this the resume of someone who can do x?”

The job market is tough and fixing your resume might not be a silver bullet but it is at least something actionable :)

If anyone told me that they are good at everything, it would show a lack of self awareness if they have only been working for three three or four years and would be an immediate red flag.

But your real issue is that you have a generic experience that really doesn’t stand out and the software development field is saturated. Yes I know everyone has to start somewhere. The market just really sucks right now and there really isn’t any reason for companies to hire junior developers when they can find their perfect match.

Make multiple versions of your resume, each of which emphasizes a different aspect of your skillset, and use the one that most closely matches the job description when you apply. When I am really interested in a job, I usually make a new version of my resume just for that one job application. It's not as much work as it sounds, because I just include or exclude different bullet points depending on the main skills required in the job description, so that when the person reviewing my resume reads it, they will say "I'm looking for an experienced C# developer... and this is an experienced C# developer! It's a match!". If I include too much info about my other skills, then they wonder if I'm much of a C# developer at all. It's about reducing what the hiring manager would see as "noise" so that they clearly receive the "signal" that they are looking for.

Also, leverage recruiters - give your resume to as many professional recruiters as you can. They're often better than applying directly now. Also apply at staffing companies, that's a good way in.

Make a list of the 100 companies you want to work in. Then do nothing but search for people to talk to at those companies. Find them, talk to them. Listen to them. Ask them to tell you their story of how they got to work there. Do nothing but talk about those companies to every friend, family member, relative, anyone who will listen. ex-lovers. Reach out to anyone and everyone who might know someone there at any single one of those companies. Go to their meetups. Go to their open houses. Go to any events they hold. Any events they sponsor, talk at. Do nothing but focus on those companies and the people who work there. Create something. Make something that could work really well in those companies.

If you're a designer, redesign all 100 company landing pages. If you're a product manager, interview users and create a new product that those companies should make. If you're in sales, become an affiliate and start selling what they sell. If you're a developer, find a bug and tell them how to fix it. If you're a writer, find spelling mistakes and tell them about it.

Pick a place you want to work at and get any job you qualify to do and once there work your way into the job you want. 2 advantages, you get a paycheck and you prove that you are a good employee. Plus you can continue your search too.We are at a strange time in tech. Companies are being very cautious about who they hire and even if they want to hire anyone at all.

Decent advice!

The market is bad and there is nothing you can do about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

You can tweak your CV here and there but if it was landing you gigs before and it stopped now, it's probably not your resume.

IMO do not submit unless you have an insidet referee. Even that does not always guarantee an interview, but still better.

I sent out roughly 1,000 job apps last year and I had maybe a dozen interviews. Expecting worse hit rates this year. For reference, I'm a mid level web dev with 4 y.o.e. I have lots of friends with similar resumes (or better in some cases) who can't get a call back to save their lives. So no, you're definitely not alone. Unless you have a best friend somewhere, or already have a senior title with more than 7 y.o.e., the door seems to be shut.

But hey, keep on paddling! We'll get there.

Maybe the padding is what’s being passed up!

You NEED to be getting at least 1 interview (with a human, never do one sided AI interviews) per month.

Interviewing is a skill and unfortunately the best way to practice that skill is real interviews.

If a month goes by without a single interview, that is all the feedback you need that you need to try something different.

It's good that you have made it a routine to apply, I would just try to fine tune your application towards specific roles.

Also consider how AI is changing what employer's are looking for. The job posting you're seeing likely exists because underneath is something that AI can't do. i.e Perhaps that simply means knowing how best to leverage AI or there's some communication / ownership element to the role that they want a human to be in charge of, etc.

If you look at things in this way you'll apply for fewer jobs. Some days you may not apply to any because none meet your criteria.

So the TLDR here is to remember it's more about focused quality instead of playing the numbers and aiming for quantity.