alt Hacker NewsI'm waiting for a TV show or Youtube series about people over 50 who go looking for jobs using only these kinds of methods.
I remember asking my grandmother what she thought a large number of applicants would be for a job. She said 10. The local grocery store gets 200+. I don't think there's a single vacancy out there which gets a single digit number of applicants any more (they might all be AI, which you can (hopefully) quickly rule out, but still).
When the dot com bubble popped, I was out of work for an extended period. I ended up living with some older friends (about 10 years older than myself and I was about 40 at that time). They gave the "hand out resumes" advice along with thinking that I could get a part time gig at the grocery store (packing groceries). They never understood that most tech recruitment at that time went through recruiters and that all the local grocery stores were unionized and had waiting lists to get rehired. The Mrs had not looked for a job in 20-ish years. I ended up getting one through the bodyshop/agency that the Mr was working at.
That city had 3 basic industries: defense, fast food and religion. The defense contractors all wanted current top secret clearances (I had bad debt at that time) and the religious employers all wanted "testimonies of faith" (think SF-86 but aimed at religious beliefs, and required 10+ years of church attendance with names & numbers of the reverend/priest/etc to vouch for you).