[chucky_z]

I was going to mention this exact same thing. The last time I had to go job hunting I submitted my resume to 40-50 companies each week or so, and unless I heard anything back ever, I did zero research outside of seeing if what they were looking for matched what I wanted to apply for.

[itsybitsycoder]

How long did it take you to find a job using this method? Were you applying to software jobs?

[tracker1]

I didn't quite follow the same approach recently... Was my first time looking for a job in several years. I sent out maybe 50 resumes and got callbacks on about half of them. I mainly applied locally. Also, updating my linked in profile got a lot more cold contacts than sending out resumes did.

I was pretty selective as far as finding a job, the interview process reduced the responses to about a third. In the end there were about 3-4 I was interested in, and one of them bumped up the offer to where it was about 20% more than the closest competing offer, so I decided to go with it.

However, I've got about 18-19 years of experience in my field (full stack software development, focusing on web applications), and stronger throughout the stack than most. Many of the positions were labelled "Senior" but the pay, and desired experience, didn't align with that statement in my opinion. It really just depends.

Having a strong resume will go a long way... having a summary statement with your desired position, goals and skills along with technology you are familiar with followed with work/project history reinforcing that experience will go a long way in terms of getting in the door.

[chucky_z]

Actually, one of my friends on Facebook saw that I was job hunting and offered me an interview. :/

I've gotten all of my best (and last few) jobs through connections, fortunately for me, and maybe unfortunately for me giving advice on how to get a job.

I'm specifically in the sysadmin/dba (and a little devops-y) side of things, and less in programming.