&quot;I guess I kinda hope that the people posting these ads realize they&#x27;re expecting too much and do want you to learn some amount on the job. &quot;<p>It is sad that someone with no experience can see through these ads, and the writers cannot. Hiring is broken. &quot;Come work for us and stall your career (by only practicing what you have already done)&quot;. Thank you, no. The underlying assumption is that either you are unable to learn anything, or that some other company should pay for you to learn something, and then this new company reaps the benefit while limiting your ability to advance your career. This is supposed to entice us to work for you how?<p>But that is not an answer to your question. Unfortunately at this stage maybe you do need to market yourself some. You mentioned learning the Paxos algorithm. Why not write it up nicely and stick it on medium or something? To the right company you&#x27;ll be displaying initiative, curiosity, intellectual capacity, an ability to communicate, and so on. Those are (should be) highly desirable skills and qualities. Not everyone will value them, because you don&#x27;t have React or whatever. Those aren&#x27;t the good jobs anyway, so don&#x27;t fret too much (I know, easier to say than do, we all need income, and poor jobs look pretty enticing when you don&#x27;t have one).<p>I think the meetup ideas posted by others is excellent, even though it apparently imposes a commute burden on you.<p>Maybe your interviewing isn&#x27;t going well? If you have a friend, even if they aren&#x27;t hiring, can you have them run you through a 50 minute interview session? Buy them dinner, 2 tickets to an event, or something. Like it or not a lot of not very emperical things factor into interviews, and if you do something to dispose somebody to not like you in the first 3 minutes that will color the rest of the interview. Something as simple as picking at your face, making a weird face, or whatever can undo you. It shouldn&#x27;t, but it does.<p>I would suggest not taking job descriptions <i>too</i> seriously. Some companies just dump a bunch of key words, but then triage the resumes that come in and pick somebody good regardless of whether you tick all those boxes. Of course others use them as gates and your resume will get tossed. But no one will remember your name, you could reapply in six months with more skills, so it doesn&#x27;t hurt to throw your name in the ring. But chances are good that they got zero resumes that matched everything in that list.