[Justsignedup]

Honestly, with the AI slop of resumes, I applied to dozens of jobs, and only got a callback to ones I had either a recruiter for or direct connections to, after 20 years of experience. Because I didn't have a big fat "worked at google for 10 years" on my resume. And I'd like to think of myself as someone who can take a very bad situation and make it look smooth.

[QuercusMax]

Even with 10 years of google on my resume I got absolutely zero non-automated responses for all the jobs I applied to after being laid off a few months back (I'm working again). Connections from my network and recruiter reach-outs were the only real leads.

But looking back on my 30 years of working (including in high school), every job I've ever had I got through personal referrals or recruiter reach-outs. I've gotten to interviews before but never actually taken a job without a personal connection.

[ge96]

Other than Indeed/Hired all my other roles were from recruiters, I don't have a degree so it's harder for me to get a job application wise, at least now I have the 6 yrs+ experience which isn't a lot but better than 0

Will say what's gotten me hired are my projects eg. robotics or getting published online for hardware stuff, I work in the web-cloud space primarily though, hardware would be cool but hard to make that jump