Previous post: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8558709/2-yoe-300-400-job-applications-150-cold-jcrbu/
I want to ask something honestly. How do you guys keep yourself motivated during a long job search when you are not even getting interviews?
It has now been more than a month, and I am continuously applying, sending cold emails, revising things and trying to learn. But from the company side, there is almost complete silence.
No call.
No interview.
No rejection.
No feedback.
Nothing.
And honestly, I find this harder than getting rejected after an interview.
If I fail an interview, at least I can understand:
"Okay, I need to improve DSA."
"My communication was not good."
"I don't know this concept."
Then I have something to work on.
But when you don't even get an interview, how do you know what is wrong?
Maybe my resume is the problem.
Maybe my experience is not enough.
Maybe I am applying to the wrong companies.
Maybe the market is bad.
Maybe I am doing something else wrong.
I simply don't know.
And because of that, I keep going back to:
"Let's apply to some more jobs. Maybe the next one will give me a call."
For me, properly searching and applying to 30–50 jobs, finding recruiter/HR contacts and sending cold emails around 5-10 can take around 3–5 hours a day.
Then I think I should study and revise too. But whenever I sit down to study, another thought comes:
"Maybe I should apply to some more jobs first."
And the cycle repeats.
People often say, "Just work hard for 5–6 months."
I understand that. It's not that I don't want to work hard or improve.
But how do you convince yourself to invest another 5–6 months when you don't even know whether your current approach is working?
This is especially difficult for me because this isn't my first long job search.
After graduating in 2024, I had already spent around 5–6 months applying before getting my previous job.
It was remote, but it was a very demanding startup job — 6 days a week, around 10–11 hours a day, with very limited holidays. My salary started at ₹15k/month, later became ₹22.5k and then ₹30k/month.
I worked there for around 1.8 years, and now I am back in the same situation again.
I have around 2 years of experience now, but I still have no idea when the next opportunity will come.
And there is another thing that makes this harder.
My family is not financially strong. I genuinely want to start earning properly and support my family. I want to see my parents happy and proud that their son is doing something good in life.
They are supportive and tell me to keep trying, but I also understand that they have expectations from me.
So sometimes it becomes mentally exhausting to keep applying every day without knowing whether anything is moving forward.
I can dedicate 2 months, 3 months, even 6 months if needed.
But how do you keep yourself motivated when there is no feedback at all?
How do you decide:
- Should I keep applying more?
- Should I spend more time learning?
- Should I change my resume?
- Should I change my whole approach?
- Or should I simply keep going?
I would genuinely like to hear from people who have gone through something similar.
How did you keep yourself going when you were putting in the effort but getting almost nothing back?