I've been unemployed for the last 5 months and finally managed out of sheer luck to land a gig that sounded sweet on the outside but it's hell in the inside, an

I've been unemployed for the last 5 months and finally managed out of sheer luck to land a gig that sounded sweet on the outside but it's hell in the inside, and I really need the money. But I digress. My experience with job search (Europe) has been full of companies calling me for an HR screener that will promptly inform me that they're on a hiring freeze. Some of them did it at the start of our discussion, some deferred it until the very end. Not only did this affected my psychology but also my prep. At first, I would reach out to people working at the companies I had an interview with, get the inside scoop. I'd get positive impressions from their engineers, some friendlier than others. All good. Then, as time went on I started singing "let it go" and gave up on reaching out and researching entirely, or I'd half-assed it because everything suddenly sounded too good to be true. Last but not least, you can tell which companies do that if you follow their Linkedin career page and notice that their job ads receive less applicants over time. It's almost as if people receive it via word of mouth, that or everyone interested is tired of it. But I know a guy who got the door and still ensures that he'll like and share everything they post on Linkedin, in spite of the fact that he's so good that he got offers from Apple and Microsoft before he even graduated, but turned them down for personal reasons. That is why I stick to the hell that managed to crack a door slightly open to be hired. If people like him have issues, there's a downturn, and companies can afford to play talented candidates like a fiddle who would even hire my 40-year old junior-mid ass to do backend?