Depending on where you live, going to IT events and conferences to connect to people in person is even more powerful. Ask them about their work and talk passionately about related stuff that you have some knowledge/skill in. Exchange contacts, say you’re looking for work.

For example, next month is DEVWORLD in amsterdam. They always give away free tickets close to the start of the event. I’m sure there are a ton more like this around the world.

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As for writing applications: For me writing very high quality applications did the trick.

• only apply to companies/positions that you are REALLY interested in
• research the position
• research the company
• if you can find somebody that works there in a similar position, ask them some questions
• use the info you gathered to show interest in your appplication
• write everything yourself, no AI writing. Be a genuine human.
• But you can use AI to give it the position and your application and tell it to make a hiring decision with pro/con arguments and rework it based on that
• make a small demo project that shows off your relevant skills and tell them about the challanges you had and what you learned to overcome them

(About the last point: I found that talking about relevant hobby projects I did and showing the code made a huge difference)

It usually takes me about a week to write one such application. But I only sent out 3 before hearing back from 2 of the companies and getting signed on by one.

I know it’s a lot more hoops then just clicking “auto apply” or “apply with AI”, but the effort pays off.

Contrary to that I often see people complaining online about how they wrote 100 applications in a month and got no job interviews… yeah buddy. (And I was initially one of those people)