I was laid off in November and, 7 months later, I'm still searching. As a Technical Writer/Documentation Specialist, it used to take 45–60 days to land a role. Today, it feels like winning the lottery. One job posting attracts thousands of applicants, often from around the world. I've applied to over 400 positions and received only four responses — and all were rejection emails. The job market is unlike anything I've seen before.

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So sorry. It's extremely rough out there. I've just re-entered the market once again myself, it's brutal. Hoping the best for all of us. 🙏🏻

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The job market is a huge mess as we all know. It took me 7 months to land a new job and 600+ applications. The norm these days is 7-10 months. Keep going and try to have a system that works for you, your opportunity is coming. Best of luck!

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Congratulations on your employment. Yes, it's brutal out there.

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400+ apps with 4 replies is brutal, and honestly that usually means something is getting filtered long before a human sees it. I’d start by checking one of your recent resumes against 2-3 job descriptions line by line, because technical writing roles are weirdly picky about exact phrases like documentation systems, content management, API docs, stakeholder comms, and versioning.

If you’ve got a two-column layout, icons, text boxes, or a fancy header/footer, strip that out first. ATS parsing can mangle a clean looking resume into nonsense, and that alone can kill callbacks even when the experience is solid.

I went through a stretch like this after a layoff too and the biggest change came from tailoring one core resume into a few tight versions instead of blasting the same file everywhere. I’d use something like ResumeJudge to spot missing keywords and formatting issues fast, but even doing it manually for your top 10 targets is worth it. Are the 4 responses from smaller companies or ones with actual in-house doc teams?

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The Internet and globalization and remote work has all had pretty severe consequences on the job market. The competition is impossible.

I agree. I’ve been searching for jobs in tech now for over a year and no luck. I’ve studied UX design and IT support and with a ISOM degree I’ve had no responses in my favor or any second round interviews. Not sure what to do but going to keep applying.

Have you tried AI roles? Ive seen many companies looking for technical writers to train AI. Some of the jobs are very high paying. Up to $100 per hour (or so they say). Linkedin always advertise these openings. Some companies are:Mercor. Handshake, Data Annotation, Telus (sp?). just to name a few. Good luck, and let me know if I can help

I need help cuz my linkedin account is banned and I need that remote job 😔

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