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.

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)?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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