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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.

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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%.

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