I’m curious if it’s just me or not. I’m an SE with 10+ years of experience, mostly in full-stack with a wide variety of languages and stacks, and my last title was at the “staff” level. I’m almost 40 years old; not sure if age discrimination is much of a thing (my interviewers have been mostly around my age or younger). I’ve been looking for a job for months. I’ve been applying to just about every job posting where my skills match on LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter (mostly just the Easy Apply option lately, so I can send more applications out). I’ve even been applying to positions that just require 2+ years of experience; I’d take any job (except defense or big tech). I’ve probably sent something like 400 applications out at this point. I’ve gotten a few interviews, and think I did OK, but I guess not good enough since I was still rejected. Is this normal?
The last time I was looking for a job (2021), I only sent 20 applications out, and landed a job on my first interview. I also tried Upwork for a couple weeks, but wasn’t able to land any contracts. I think everyone there is either looking for very cheap devs in the developing world or rockstars with tons of contracting experience and large portfolios.
It’s gotten really easy to slap together an AI cover letter specifically for the job. There’s a lot of uncertainty about the economy.
In 2023 I’d send out maybe 5-10 a day and it took me 9 months. It was tough.
I have done that a few times, but editing it so it doesn’t sound like AI, and to remove characters AI likes to use that aren’t on standard keyboards (like the em dash). Not sure if companies care about cover letters or not either.
I started doing it for all the jobs. Can’t say whether that got me the interview. Definitely need to edit it.