How I practically hacked the job market. ( It's not quality, its quantity )

Disclaimer: This might annoy some recruiters, but please hear me out—this is coming from a job seeker’s perspective in the 2024 market. I’m not selling anything, just sharing my story.

So, I’m a self-taught full-stack dev with 4 years of experience and, if I do say so myself, a pretty solid portfolio. My struggles with the job market began about 2.5 years ago, right after I graduated. Since then, I’ve had a few periods of unemployment, mostly because I work as a freelance contractor.

My first job lasted 4 months before I got laid off. Then I spent 2 months hunting for another gig before landing a long-term contract that I stuck with for 1.5 years. During that time, I learned two things:

1. I was getting paid way less than I should have been.
2. Other people at my level had way better work hours while I was grinding through 10-12 hour days of mind numbing work.

I was thinking of switching, but my boss found out about it (thanks, LinkedIn) and fired me before I could find another role. That totally wrecked my mental.

Around then, I came across a study that said people who switch jobs more often end up in a better spot, especially at mid to senior levels. My friends backed this up, so I figured, why not?

My plan was:

1. Keep applying to new jobs.
2. Land a new job.
3. Repeat step 1.

I’ve realized the only way to know your worth is to keep tabs on what other companies are offering. And trust me, companies do the same with you—they post fake jobs to see what people will work for. It’s why getting ghosted after the 2nd or 3rd interview is so common—they win no matter what.

I found another job within a month but kept applying anyway. In 6 months, I’d switched contracts three times and ended up with two remote gigs that each paid 25% more than my original job but this took a toll on my time and my energy, so being the developer that i am, I was like. Why not automate this. XD

I built a script in Python to auto-apply to hundreds of jobs every week, focusing on remote roles.

This is where i made another major discovery.
ATS systems are sooo compexx these days.
ATS systems started ranking my resume lower because it was being flagged for spamming.

One recruiter even called me out, saying they knew I was applying everywhere and wouldn’t consider me.
To bypass this issue. I personalized my resume for each job using a custom GPT model I trained on highly ranked resume templates using the McKinzie format and ended up making them a custom chatbot primarily for myself.

Within 2 months, I was unable to use my LinkedIn as a troll account to getting tons of messages by recruiters. I had now officially turned The ATS game on it’s head XD

I had successfully made this an AI vs AI bout LOL (You started it recruiters, if you had just read the resumes yourself, we all could be in a much better job market rn)

I’m curious if any of you have tried this before or not and what were the results for you guys.

For those who are interested, train your own GPT model. Just remember, in 2024, you’re writing your resume for the ATS first, and the recruiter second.