> He estimates he applied for hundreds of positions, relying on nearly a dozen jobs boards, researching potential employers, and writing personalized cover letters to accompany his résumé. For the most part, he heard nothing back, regardless of how qualified he was.

I’ve worked on and off as a mentor in some programs that do resume review and interview coaching. I’ve never seen anyone apply to “hundreds” of jobs and get zero responses without also having serious issues with their resume. In one case someone produced a PDF resume from some obscure program that wouldn’t load on standard PDF viewers, so none of the companies could even open it. More commonly, people fire off rough draft quality resumes that are full of typos and half-finished sentences that would send their resume to the bottom of any hiring manager’s pile.

The good news is that most of them respond well to coaching. Even 30 minutes if resume proofreading, advice, and practice interview can be a game changer in these cases. The tough part is getting these people matched up with these services, as many of them have become very disgruntled and convinced that the problem lies with employers, not with their application style.