> Digging through job postings and applying to them has turned into a numbers game

It's always been a numbers game, at least over the course of my career.

I learned to make it about people a long time ago. In 40+ years I have applied for jobs through ads maybe two times. Every other job I've had came through friends, former colleagues, word of mouth and referrals. I haven't updated my résumé or looked at a job board in decades.

As a freelancer I do get gigs through an agency, but even that works mainly by word of mouth. I never apply or do anything resembling an interview for those jobs. I keep my freelance customers for a long time -- five years or longer -- so I don't have to churn for new projects all the time. Even a fairly small company can keep a few programmers and system admins busy.

I understand that people early in their career don't have a lot of professional contacts, and that makes it hard to find a job. In that situation perhaps it makes sense to apply for a lot of jobs, but I think targeting a few specific companies and cultivating relationships will get better results, even for someone fresh out of school or laid off from their first job. A person who went to university should have quite a few contacts from school. A person who worked even for a few months has colleagues from that job. When someone posts that they have worked in the business for a while but have no professional network I wonder how that could happen -- take off the headphones, stop shunning every meeting and social interaction, meet more people, and not just other programmers/tech people.