Started treating my job search like a sales funnel and my response rate went up
I had been applying for about two months the normal way finding a job posting tailoring my resume a little and watching it disappear into nothing. What I changed was this : I stopped applying to anything where I couldn't find the hiring manager or a team lead on LinkedIn within about ten minutes of finding the posting. Applying takes fifteen minutes the work is everything that happens after. I started spending more time on ten applications with follow up than fifty applications into a void and my interview rate went from nonexistent to about one or two a week. I'm not hired yet so I'm not posting a win just sharing what moved the needle because two months ago I would have read this and tried it while i was spending another evening lying in bed on my phone.