I'm at wit's end. I'm three months into a job search like the 30-month one I went through starting four years ago, and things proceed apace. I've gotten zero interviews despite 20 years of experience, and even finding things I think I could stand is a fucking tall ask.
I've always been of the mindset that if you have a good product, shockingly little marketing is required. And that investing in the product is going to have a far larger ROI than blowing money on trying to convince people your product is better than it is. Just fucking, you know, make it better.
Which is what I've always done. Whether it's a redesign or significantly better editing than the audience is used to, or infographics for stories that no one is going to comprehend from text analysis. Or, process improvement that makes employees lives better even though it may challenge the necessity of salaried positions.
I cannot and will not subscribe to this notion that lying to people for pay is an ethical career. During my one stint in marketing, I got to the point of feeling physically ill that I was making the best money in my life to write saccharine copy about products we internally mocked our customers for buying.
I honestly don't know how I can find a job that makes life worth living at this point, which is less than ideal when ideation is always on the menu (I last got out of a psych ward in late January, and all they had to offer is "you need to stop wanting what you want."). I don't understand why I would want to be alive to be able to pay off debt accrued because society has already discarded me as useless.
I swear to fucking god, I cannot handle being told again that I'm wrong to have the ethics and goals in life that I do. If these do not align with the positions advertised, then the logical choice is simply removing myself from this clusterfuck.
I have provable results from things I've done that did align, so why does saving companies six and seven figures several times by teaching myself what I needed to to accomplish my goals over the course of my career make me a bad hire? I've rarely worked for competent managers, so I'm generally needed to actually get improvements done. I don't care about my title, and I've topped out at $48K, so it's not like I'm looking for $150K ... but I don't like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it's what others want to hear.
What is the point of even being alive when everyone is telling me I'm wrong to want to accomplish things that improve the lives of people other than shareholders? They sure as fuck don't need the money. I do, but I don't count because I've not already rolled over and begged to suck at the teat of immoral people who care nothing for the rest of the world, let alone the people without whom they'd have no product in the first place.
I have much less work and job search experience than you but I can tell you what I learned from a year of searching for junior level work where I wanted:
There are two levels of recruitment, the first one are recruiters and HR people. Having experience and industry connections can allow you to bypass or shorten the amount of time you need to deal with these people (sometimes companies force every applicant to go through this because of policy), but most of them aren't interested in what you do or what you think of this job. They want to hear how you check the boxes that are placed in front of them. This is where you have to just make it as easy as possible to get through it, have prepared stories w/ embellishments, a fake nice attitude and reasons why you will lick company boot until it's polished (in a nice and not-sarcastic way). You highlight what you found interesting about the job/company and what they can get out of it. If you're starting without connections then it's the numbers game where you throw forward applications everywhere and hope something bites to even get to here. The whole thing feels so fake and full of deception and useless work to promote yourself and I hate it.
The second level is the people you're actually going to work with, around or under. There you still have to be positive, but you can be more genuine, they'd actually know what the job actually is, how they honestly feel about things, you can talk about things that actually matter to people working there rather than corporate overlords/shareholders (but don't explictly give reasons against that).
You'll be judged on both your character and whether you are as much as you said you were on your application.
Here is where you show off, or just give straight what you've done, what you can give and what you expect in return. This is where you ultimately decide whether you want this job assuming they didn't wear you out with the first level.
Yeah I expect I will have enough good reputation to move up as I get experience, but the whole process is full of bullshit and I can count on it not going away entirely. It's like you're on a treadmill where the goal is to sell yourself but crap is being thrown at your face every hour. As unwinnable as it might feel, you've only lost if you give up.
To add, as for why people willingly go through this in America (and Canada and elsewhere) is because there isn't really an alternative unless you are freelancing/self-employed, you work somewhere they take anyone with at least half a brain and two good legs, or you have a rich uncle who has a "job" for you whether you are smart and experienced or not.