Very few people in HR respect the education they "require" in their job postings. With an M.S. you should almost certainly be able to pick up any toolkit or lan

Very few people in HR respect the education they "require" in their job postings. With an M.S. you should almost certainly be able to pick up any toolkit or language quickly enough that, while you won't hit the ground running on day 1, by day 5 you should be full speed. You've almost certainly done harder things than learning LINQ, for example - that's what a degree is supposed to signal. I suspect that you're just getting caught by a moron somewhere in the pipeline, so you should not take this as a meaningful appraisal of your skills. That said, not getting a job does suck. From the limited picture I see above, your technical chops aren't what's missing. I wouldn't spend a tremendous amount of time doing more coding work. Some folks like resume consultants, but I have never used one and can't speak to their effectiveness. Best advice I can give you is to send out as many applications as you can get out. A few is not enough. In times of my life when I was in full-on application mode, I'd send out 5 relatively targeted applications a day, where targeted meant I wrote a specific cover letter and tailored my resume to highlight what they were looking for. Most places won't send anything back. Most places - startups and BigCo's alike - are staffed by assholes. Just keep plugging through whatever avenues you can find and something should turn up.