My situation was possibly relevant, although atypical. I moved back to SF after decamping to NY after the dot.com crash. I started a company there which failed

My situation was possibly relevant, although atypical. I moved back to SF after decamping to NY after the dot.com crash. I started a company there which failed after five years, and then consulted for around three. Landed back in SF and had a terrible time finding employment in a very tight job market. The strikes against me were consulting, starting my own company and having a skill set that did not include several trendy buzzwords that were not in demand with the folks I had been working with. And, possibly, being honest about that[1]. A fuzzier but no less real problem was that the network of folks I knew in the Bay Area shrank a lot, and that's how I've gotten most of the work I've ever had. I did finally get a position. It sucked in a lot of ways, and my commute really sucked. But after a year, I was coming from a recognizable, local name and that appeared to make all the difference. So now that I actually like my job, I filter head-hunter mail to a separate mailbox and write pro-forma 'no thanks' in batches. [1] I am mostly honest in my work history. I suppose I lie by omission - I don't want to ever write Java again, so I've purged references to it from my resume. But it seems that a lot of folks find creative definitions for words like 'experience'. I know some whom I didn't hire did, and people I know are not terribly embarrassed by admitting it. It would be interesting to see some anonymous survey stats on the question.