[lettergram]

A few things:

1. I always work with recruiting agencies. Might sound odd, but they have a direct line to managers and their incentives align with yours. To that end you only submit a handful of resumes. I’ll submit some outside of the recruiting agencies as well, but generally they get the bulk of my interviews.

2. I always interview a few times a year (2-5), so I always have offers on the table. This let’s you negotiate and keeps your skills up.

3. Regarding your pass rate. You may not be applying to the correct roles and / or there are some other key-words you’re missing in your resume. Try to pack keywords where you can, because NLP is used to filter resumes as a lot of places.

4. Find someone to professionally review your resume. A recruiting agency will do this for free!

5. Practice coding interviews on leetcode (website), cracking the coding interview (book), etc.

6. Practice mock white board interviews if you can, I actually have a 6ft white board at home (for general use, but good practice)

7. What you’re seeing is normal, you’ll always face rejection. If you’re a dev, facing 50% to 90% rejection is fairly normal (From top of funnel) depending where you apply and you’re skill set.

I for one always apply to the best jobs I can get. This means I face probably higher rejection rates than average.

Note, none of this is really about your skill at the job. That can come into play for high-end niche jobs, but full-stack developers will always face the same default problem set, found on leetcode and the like.

[Ocerge]

2-5 interviews a year feels like a lot, but I _do_ recommend interviewing at least once a year. I'm now ~10 years into my career (I have a CS degree as well), and interviews scare the hell out of me and keep me sharp if I ever need to get a job ASAP. Software interviews are largely bullshit, but if this is what you want to do for a career, you have to play the game (or be so overwhelmingly smart that it doesn't apply, but that's rare).

[Yajirobe]

What does it mean to interview at least once a year? If I already have a job, why would I need to interview just for the sake of interviewing?

[Ocerge]

I mean, yeah. It’s a different skill-set entirely. Also forces you to go back to CS fundamentals that you almost never use directly in industry (like remembering what a red-black tree is or how Dijkstra’s works again). Once a year really isn’t a lot.

[Yajirobe]

So you're suggesting applying for jobs just for the sake of interviewing? That sounds mean and misleading to the companies that actually want to hire someone.

[vladgur]

I’m actually curious about your practice of interviewing several times a year in spite of(I hope) being happy with your current role. Interviewing is incredibly disrupting for both sides, as an interviewee you have to take a day off more often than not and the other side has to invest time of several highly paid individuals to interview you. What do you say when asked why are you interviewing? And are you interviewing at companies where you are prepared to take a job regardless of your current obligations at your present company(let’s say you are in the midst of building a critical application)

I’m genuinely curious

[takinola]

It's counter-intuitive but the best time to get a new job is when you are happy at your current job. Most people think "well, things are going great. Why should I look for another job?". It's pretty simple. Ask yourself the question "What offer would make you change jobs?". Most people start searching for jobs when they are unhappy with their current situation. If your job is crappy, then you will take pretty much any offer just to get out. If things are going great at your current job, then the only thing that would make you move is a fantastic offer. Why wait until things go sour then move on to another sub-optimal situation? Why not use the time to find a fantastic offer now?

[gombosg]

This makes sense, although having a great and a crappy job is a wide scale, with most people probably being in between somewhere. And switching jobs is not just about offers.

In my experience, looking for a (good) job takes a lot of time and energy, and OP's experience reflects this well: you do have a lot of calls, emails, interviews etc. that lead nowhere.

You may do the onsite interview to learn that their pay range is way off or that the office is just not a good workplace physically.

Even if everything looks nice in the benefits package, you can end up having a bad manager, teammates or too chaotic/boring/legacy/complex/(insert your nightmares here) projects - these are risks that you take on with any job switch, not just the risk of the job search itself.

[takinola]

Nothing comes for free. You're digging for jobs with the hope that it turns up a diamond sometime along the way. It's tasking but the only question is if the possible payout is worth it to you.