Comment by scarface_74

Let me tell you my experience in both 2023 and again last year.

For context, I had 25+ years of development experience at the time, a decade leading projects, 7 years of AWS experience and 3.5 years of experience at AWS ProServe with major open source contributions to a popular open source official “AWS solution”…

Plan A: reach out to my network. Results within two weeks - two offers for full time jobs and one short term contract.

Plan B: targeted outreach based on a niche in AWS where I was at the time considered one of the industry subject matter experts (ie third highest contributor to the popular open source AWS solution along with my own decently known projects I did while I was there). Two interviews one offer.

Plan C: where you are - randomly applying for jobs via an ATS. Every job had hundreds of applicants. I applied for over one hundred jobs mostly via LinkedIn Easy apply and a couple through LinkedIn. My application wasn’t even viewed. Let alone was my resume downloaded LinkedIn shows you both.

Lesson? If you are applying for a job blindly via an ATS with a generic skillset, it’s almost impossible to stand out above the noise.