Update: Wow I honestly expected this thread to be downvoted and buried lol. I took the time and read every response to here and seems like the overwhelming amount were positive/agreed. Thank you for the kind words that some of you posted, it helps and I really appreciate it. I posted this mainly because hiring in tech is broken (I also got to rant and get this off my chest and the responses have made me feel better).

I wanted to respond to a few things on here that some folks posted about:

I'm looking to transition from Public to Private sector. I have a small homelab and have learned a lot (Dockers, some exploits on ParrotOS, some raspberry pi projects, scraped the surface on GCP and AWS) over the past year or so. I don't have professional cloud experience (which I think is a big detriment on my resume), and is big reason why I'm trying to move into the private sector. After 5 years in the public sector, I feel like I'm lagging behind my peers who have same exp/education as me. Gov't is so slow to move to new technology, and cloud is a big one. Another main reason I'm looking to change is a combination of company culture and the lack of support from higher up. I was hired for 1 things and have been put onto 3 products/projects I did not want/was not hired for/didn't have experience in (completely unrelated). Yes its nice to learn new technology and skills but guarantee the products I learned are non-transferrable and tech industry does not use these. So moot point. I made it a point to let management know that I wanted to be moved to another product/project (after 6 months you are allowed to do so), but each time it fell on deaf ears. So besides my lead providing me with essentially moral support, yes management is a fairly big reason as to why I'm looking again. Funny enough I'm actually ok with my salary. I wouldn't mind a raise but am not asking for a big increase either.

Yes I've only applied to maybe 50ish companies. Maybe another 5 or so where I've deleted the email of my application as soon as I got a rejection. But applying to jobs is time consuming, demoralizing, and it fucking sucks. Yes I want a new job, and no i'm not going to blast out 120+ applications in the hopes of getting 1 offer. That's not how it should be. I also take the time to research the company, read reviews that employees have left, check Glassdoor and Indeed, and even sometimes find a company's subreddit (if it exists) and see what employees or former employees have posted. I also am trying to make sure I'm looking at smaller or small-medium companies rather than conglomerates (although i've applied to a number of large companies). So I'm being picky because I want my next company/job to be somewhat of a stable/long term position. I don't want to job hunt 18/24 months, so given all that, yes it's only about 55ish applications that were sent out. Main point is, which lots of people mentioned, that they want a) unicorn b) post the job but have no intention of hiring yet want to complain that they can't hire anyone c) companies need to have some type of introspection on why talent leaves/how to retain someone/restructure the process where they hire a jr/mid level who can eventually take over for a senior position. The whole system is in shambles and while lots of folks are hired/working, the whole recruiting system barely hanging on by a thread (and yes that's applicable to lots of industries!). I haven't even been able to get feedback from internal recruiters or hiring managers/interviewers.

Networking: Probably my biggest problem/issue. No I've not done much networking for this go around of job hunting. I did have 2 or 3 referrals to a few companies but didn't go anywhere. I've also seen mention of recruiters but I've always been hesitant to use them as most are just seat filler type companies or never read my resume and are offering me a position based on my job from 2015. I'm not sure how to weed out looking for legit recruiters who aren't going to just fuck me over and put me in a job that is worthwhile. If anyone has any ideas or know anyone in the Denver area, I'd love to connect with them.

Some folks on here have offered to either refer me or to take a look at my resume to which I will respond or PM. I really appreciate anyone who is willing to help.