Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
It&#x27;s bad, but it&#x27;s not that bad. The fact you have only had one interview this year is very odd in my opinion. I&#x27;ve been on the market twice this year and it&#x27;s been harder for sure (especially earlier this year), but it&#x27;s far from impossible to find something.<p>I don&#x27;t know if you&#x27;re looking for advice or just anecdotes here, but I&#x27;ll share some thoughts for what might be happening...<p>Frontend development has changed a lot over the last 5 years. Obviously I don&#x27;t know what skills you have, but a few years ago it was common for companies to be looking for a &quot;frontend developer&quot; with just HTML5, CSS &amp; jQuery experience. These roles basically don&#x27;t exist anymore. Typically a frontend developer today would be someone who&#x27;s got experience with a modern JS framework like React (or similar), knows TypeScript, has experience writing tests, possibly has some experience with dev tools like Storybook or docker, etc... At least this the kind of thing I typically see companies recruiting for these days.<p>The last 5 years also haven&#x27;t been very representative. The tech job market from around 2016 on has been very strong and there was a huge under supply of labour (especially during the pandemic). Today tech companies are cutting jobs, or slowing their hiring, meanwhile your average 12 year old has done some basic HTML and JavaScript coding. Just knowing your way around HTML and CSS isn&#x27;t going to land you a job anymore – companies can afford to be much more selective.<p>If you&#x27;re not even getting interviews you can assume your resume is the problem. Again, I don&#x27;t know what skills you have but you either don&#x27;t have skills that are being sought after or you are not showing your experience in a way that highlights those skills well on your resume.<p>It may also be that you&#x27;re applying for roles that are beyond your experience level. In my experience if you&#x27;ve been a developer for 5 years that would typically mean you&#x27;re a bit better than a junior developer, but unlikely to be a senior. A couple of years ago you may have been able to land a senior developer role, but today the market is far more competitive and you&#x27;ll have people with well over a decade of experience applying for these roles in most cases. I know it sucks but you may want to look for roles which require a little less experience even if you believe you&#x27;re worth more. It&#x27;s far better to be employed and in a role where you&#x27;re growing your experience than being unemployed. You can always look for something else when you have the experience you need or when the market picks up a bit.<p>The fact you&#x27;ve been out of work for about 6 months now would be sending huge warning flags to me if I were a recruiter. Recruiters want to place candidates that are in demand and as harsh as this may sound a 6 month gap in your employment will suggest you are not an ideal candidate. I would seriously consider coming up with a back story to explain why you&#x27;ve been out of work for this long.<p>Some will disagree with this, but you should think of your resume like an Instagram profile – only show the things others want to see, and don&#x27;t be afraid to represent yourself in a slightly exaggerated way. Obviously you need to be able to do what you say you can do, but you need your resume to give a good impression of you and your experience if you want any chance of getting an interview. So for example, if I was the primary dev on some project I&#x27;ll typically say that I &quot;led&quot; the project on my resume. I&#x27;ll also always include things like &quot;senior&quot; &amp; &quot;lead&quot; in job roles because, &quot;Lead software engineer&quot; looks way better than &quot;Frontend developer&quot; imo. Minor things like this can make a big difference and help your profile stand out from the rest.<p>I guess to concluded though, the market isn&#x27;t that bad that you should be getting at least some interviews. It sounds like your resume is being dismissed for some reason and you should try to understand why that is. If you want to anonymise and share your resume I&#x27;d be happy to take a look.