About 6 months ago I realized none of the job applications I sent were actually getting anywhere. I was confused and thought maybe I was the problem. Recruiters see my work and think "oh he's not the right fit."

I work as a designer/animator, so a portfolio is pretty much the main metric used for judging your work and eligibility to get hired.

On my new portfolio, I implemented custom tracker links for every individual company I apply to, both in my resume and the application I send to them so I could at least back up some of my theories with data.

These are my current stats since getting laid off in October: 



\-553 job applications with personalized resumes

\-15k portfolio views (most traffic from the three.js forum and reddit) 

\-only 35 of those views from actual recruiters for positions I applied to

\-28 of those 35 were from me reaching out directly to the recruiter and sending them my portfolio (in total I reached out to over 100 people personally through dm or email)

\-2 calls



It's crazy how you can spend months building something for a group of people only to have everyone else except those people actually see what you've built. It's also crazy how I can send an email to "Greg the Electrician" who's the CEO, Founder, CTO, CFO, Sole individual contributor, salesperson, lead generator, driver, and supplier of their own business and get a call back within a half hour about doing business, but companies with hundreds of talent acquisition managers, headhunters, recruiters, scouts, etc. can't even send an email back to say I've been rejected after 4 months of nothing. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

So to recap: it seems like if you don't know the hiring manager (or even if you do in plenty of my own cases) your resume goes nowhere, neither does the portfolio. A 1.2% portfolio review rate from sent applications is honestly just sad.

PSA: Your applications are going nowhere when you apply to jobs.