| Typography aside, the frustration of this early career network engineer is palpable and understandable. The open call job situation has always been a mess, but automation and the internet growth has just made it messier. It's worth remembering, though, many/most jobs don't come from this process. It's worth trawling jobs postings of course to see what's going on, but if that's all you are doing you'll probably have a hard time. In tech circles, I see mostly two camps of process. One is big and/or established companies that have a bureaucratic evaluation process, the other being more "bespoke" hiring at e.g. young startups. Navigating both processes is vastly easier if you have some sort of personal connection. It doesn't have to be a deep one, but it gets you out of the slush pile. Any large company application with an attached internal recommendation will at least be read by someone. Any small company is more to reduce the crapshoot aspect of hiring by convincing themselves they know something more about this candidate because so-an-so's cousin's brother used to work with them. My most effective advice to younger job seekers has been to get themselves out there in face to face settings (e.g. hardware/software meetups, conferences, etc.) and to directly contact (ideally through a colleague or common connection) companies they already know they'd like to work with... you have no idea what they are thinking internally but don't have posted on a job board. Also, senior people in your life can often help you with contacts and recommendations, and often are more than happy to. Don't hesitate to ask if you have a good relationship. For what it's worth, nearly all the jobs I've had in my career haven't been posted. The one that was, reached out to me with an internal recommendation. This only happens with some sort of networking, but that naturally comes with time. This post was by someone 5ish years in, if I recall correctly, and that's long enough to be effective relative to entry candidates. |