Don't focus too much on a few rejections. The hiring process is badly broken at most companies. You application may have never been seen by a human. Nothing wr

Don't focus too much on a few rejections. The hiring process is badly broken at most companies. You application may have never been seen by a human. Nothing wrong with brushing up on your skills but it's very likely you could switch jobs now and learn while on the new job instead. One way you can do this a little faster and with less rejection is on LinkedIn (I know, it has annoying problems of it's own.) If you don't have a profile create one and set it to looking for work. When recruiters reach out you don't have to compromise on your original goal. Just explain to them that you're interested in working with xyz technology. There is a decent chance they'll come back with that job. One more thing I'll mention it you're still having trouble after that. You mentioned Cloud, the cloud market is especially hot right now. One option would be to study for and pass one of the entry level Amazon cloud certs and list that in place of experience. But in reality you probably don't even have to do that. One of the hardest parts of switching jobs is the rejection and annoyances built into the process. Again I hope you can believe me that this is more representative of how broken the process is rather than any problem with you. There are thousands of companies paying millions of dollars to recruiters to try to find people like you, and yet they are clearly unsuccessful for you to feel like this. In situations like this I personally find it better to try and shake my head and laugh at the situation. It's pretty absurd if you're able to step back from it a bit. Good luck friend!