Every piece of job search advice assumes a funnel that converts. Send 20 applications, get 4 screens, get 2 onsites, get 1 offer. I have not met anyone whose numbers look like that in the last two years, and I think the gap between the advice and the arithmetic does real psychological damage, because it turns a market problem into a personal failure.
I’m 47, sixteen years in, currently between roles and applying across three different kinds of job at once because narrowing hasn’t worked either. I’m not going to pretend I’ve got this solved.
What I’d find useful, and I suspect others would: the raw counts. Applications out, responses back, screens, finals, offers. Over what stretch of time, and roughly what field.
Not to benchmark ourselves against each other. The opposite. I think most of us are quietly assuming our numbers are uniquely bad.