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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

150 resumes sounds like you're just shotgunning them out there willy nilly. Maybe take a more nuanced approach and work your network a little bit. Your network could even just be people you've worked with in the past who respect you and enjoyed working with you, doesn't need to be people you actively keep up with.

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It's hard to keep morale up after spending multiple hours composing a few thoughtful, "good fit" applications, just to be auto-rejected immediately upon submission without them even being seen by a human. I don't even bother anymore unless I have someone on the other end who's willing to usher my application straight to a hiring manager.

Yeah tailoring your resume is an exercise in futility when the most common outcome is either no response or an auto reject email.

Changing a few keywords or whatever is one thing, but trying to go bullet-point accuracy for the listing is a total waste of time when 95% of the time the resume is never viewed by a human.

I agree - that's why my advice isn't to merely spend more time studying who you're sending resumes to - instead, ask friends and friends of friends for recommendations to get your foot in the door. I worked at a company that a lot of techies aspired to work at at one point, and if your resume came in through the unsolicited form, you had basically a 0% chance of anyone even seeing your resume. But if your resume was recommended by a current employee (not vouching for them absolutely, just telling the recruiters - hey, check this out), then you had like a 1-2% chance of getting hired. Which doesn't sound great but it is far better than 0%.

"willy nilly"??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_nilly

"Willy nilly is an idiom that means "haphazardly" or "spontaneously"."

Thanks, I thought it had only the first meaning:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willy-nilly

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