I was out of work for almost a year and a half not too long ago. I applied for every job I was physically capable of doing, but on an awful lot of them, I got the “We would love to hire you, but you are just too over-qualified” bit. I tried dumbing down my resume, but that had little effect as well. I also discovered that Austin, TX is not someplace to have a military background on your resume.
I had a similar problem about ten years ago. Even the temp agencies would not hire me. I could not even get a phone call from anyone. Most people would just refuse to even take a phone call from me after I sent them my resume. after 6 months of not even a single interview, I got desperate and started applying for temp agencies and asking employment agencies to find me a job. The employment agencies would pass my file around from one person to another and then they would stop returning my phone calls.
ONly one temp agency would give me a reason why they would not place me in a job...”we just don’t feel you are the right kind of person for us. Your resume is too varied and not believable.” By the time I had started looking for temp work, I had added every job all the way back to age 18(which only amounted to 6 different employers with about 3 different positions per employer)to my resume. They just did not want me. After ten months of no prospects, I decided to take over the family business. Its been a wild ride.
I remember one temp agency asked me to take a typing test. and to verify my knowledge of MS office. I had recently spent a month of typing and debugging fortran code from poor photocopies of photocopies of printouts. This was before scanning software was very common and would not work on a poor photocopy. I got extremely good at typing all the numbers and symbols without looking at the keyboard, blazing fast too. I aced their test like a champ. I doubt many people there could do as good or better. The guy that gave me the test barely said a word to me and wouldn’t look me in the eye.