I spent a year after college looking for jobs to apply to. I found three I was remotely qualified for (those I applied to).
If I applied for even a small portion of the jobs that pop up on local job boards, it would consume every hour of the day.
In a normal economy you'd see entry level jobs there. But every job wants years of experience and specialized certifications. I don't even have the means to get the certifications.
Taking an alternate route is a coping method. I still probe the job boards during the day.
One piece of advice: don't let the job ad make you think you're unqualified and stop you from applying. Employers often a) don't know what they want/need b) throw everything they can think of in that ad. It may be a challenge to get past the naive recruiter without all of the skills mentioned on your resume, but it can be worth it because the interview will bear out whether you'll actually be useful to the hiring manager.
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee. I understand that it happens, but I have no idea how someone decides "hey, we need a new person" and has no idea what they would like that person to do. Hiring is a hard enough problem without handicapping yourself out of the gate by not having and expressing a clear idea of what you're looking for.
How hard can it be to say "we're looking for someone who knows enough Java to follow our codebase without needing their hand held. We are also dabbling in Python so that will be a plus if you know it."? Why can't a req for an experienced engineer read "We need someone reliable and knowledgeable enough that they can do all the handholding our other developers need."? There must be some part of this that I'm missing, because actually writing a req seems too damned simple to be this FUBAR'ed.
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee
Oh, that's easy. The manager you'd be working for, the budget holder he reports to, and the person who writes the ad don't know each other, have never met, and have never spoken or even communicated except via filling in forms designed by HR people who know HR but know nothing about the industry.
I've heard people claim that employers will put out jobs with ridiculous requirements to fill some "we tried" quota for a regulation with a name that escapes me.
They also usually inflate the requirements a bit on purpose, on the basis that they will get fewer unqualified applicants that way. They get lots of unqualified applicants without doing that because "everyone knows" that employers inflate their requirements a bit on purpose.
Companies always ask for more than they need, just as candidates often claim more experience than they actually have. Don't be intimidated by what they say they want.
If I applied for even a small portion of the jobs that pop up on local job boards, it would consume every hour of the day.
In a normal economy you'd see entry level jobs there. But every job wants years of experience and specialized certifications. I don't even have the means to get the certifications.
Taking an alternate route is a coping method. I still probe the job boards during the day.