> One overlooked aspect of this humiliating process is that it saps your confidence.

This has been me on occasion during the last couple months of searching. I've been worried that my work history was too disjointed to tell a coherent story. Or that I'm not actually as skilled as I thought. Or that some skills have atrophied. Or they just aren't in demand anymore.

I brought it up to a career coach (part of my severance package) and she seemed to think I was overqualified for a couple of them. I'm not sure that's true, and suspect she doesn't grok tech enough to make that assessment. But even if she's right, hell, something straightforward where I'm "overqualified" sounds kind of nice.