Dozens

In between those two moments, it was the most emotionally draining, mentally exhausting periods of my life. At first, I thought I got 2 big name internships, if I just worked hard enough, if I applied to enough jobs, someone would see my potential. Dozens of applications a day. Hundreds a month. Eventually, it added up to well over 2100. They didn't even send me rejection letters, just ghosting. I received 31 interviews in total, made it to 5 final rounds, and got 1 offer. I didn’t cry: 18 months of full-time job hunting had already drained all my tears. I stopped using only LinkedIn Easy Apply. It feels efficient, but most of the time your resume just disappears. I started applying directly through company websites. I followed hiring managers and recruiters on LinkedIn. I DM’d people. I searched startups and smaller companies that weren’t posting on the big job boards. I had to find ways to make the system work for me instead of drowning in it. For interviews, I practiced with AMA Interview, where I could do mock interviews with an AI avatar. It gave me feedback answers and customized questions based on resumes and specific job roles, then combined their real question banks with Glassdoor's interview reviews. There were months when I didn’t get a single reply. Months where I kept refreshing my inbox anyway, knowing there would be nothing new. I practiced interviews on the subway, whispering STAR answers to myself like a script I couldn’t quite get right. I showed up on networking calls pretending to be confident when I was barely holding on. Some of the rejections hurt. But what hurt more was the silence. The long stretches where no one responded at all. I started wondering if I was just invisible in this system, if anything I’d done even mattered. But let me be clear, tools helped, but they didn’t save me. What saved me was refusing to stop. What saved me was showing up again, and again, and again, even when it felt like no one was listening. Even when it felt like I was falling behind while everyone else was moving on. At some point, I stopped applying altogether, not because I gave up, but because I couldn’t keep going like that. I wasn’t getting rejected because I wasn’t good. I was getting rejected because I had no strategy. I was applying in spam. Using the same resume for every job. Hoping quantity would beat quality. It didn’t. So I sat down with myself and rewrote everything. I made multiple resumes for different roles, data analyst, business analyst... I looked up actual resumes of people who had the jobs I wanted. I compared mine line by line. I realized how much I was underselling myself. I learned how to reframe what I’d done so that it actually matched what hiring managers were looking for. And then one day, after yet another final-round interview, I got the call. The offer. I stared at the screen for a while in silence. Not out of shock, but because for the first time in a year, I felt seen. I still think about the people I know who are still looking. People just as smart, just as hardworking, who deserve just as much. This job market is cruel. It doesn’t reward effort equally. If you're still in it, please know this: it’s not your fault. You are not behind. You are not failing. Apply less, but apply better. Talk to people. Ask for help. Rewrite your story until it finally lands in the hands of someone willing to read it. You only need one yes. That’s all it takes.