The job search takes persistence above everything else... even more important than having the necessary skills. Its objective is to break you. This is what most people don't realize or won't allow themselves to acknowledge. They think the job search is designed to find you your next job. No. It is designed to weed out those without fortitude. And it does claim a good number of people each day who just drop out from disappointment, exhaustion, or impatience.
The key is to pace yourself. Take a vow to never give up. And turn yourself into a literal machine to keep applying. During this phase, it doesn't matter who ghosts you, how many rejections you get, how isolated you feel. Just keep churning out the applications. First, last, and always, it's a game of numbers. At some point you will start getting responses and that will lead to an entirely new set of disappointments, exhaustion, and frustrations.
It's an inhumane game. And the only way to win at it is to keep playing.
