I would likely agree that this is what is happening. The big missing piece in all of this is the feedback loop. He has been doing the same process for a long ti

I would likely agree that this is what is happening. The big missing piece in all of this is the feedback loop. He has been doing the same process for a long time with no results and instead of questioning his approach he is playing the victim card. He should step back and realize he can't compete at that level. I find that people that sometimes work at small companies tend to take on roles that they may not necessarily have been able to get otherwise. Once they are laid off, they expect to have the same job at another company. What is sometimes lost is that those companies may only hire for that role when the person has an MBA or a particular designation, etc. The person feels they should get the job since they have been doing it already. Well, it just doesn't work that way. You can either keep smashing your head against the wall or just maybe go find yourself something else to smash your head against. In his case, instead of accepting that the jobs he is applying for he is perhaps marginally a fit for, I suspect he continues to apply even after seeing that he only meets perhaps 1 or 2 of the five criteria. Doing so is just stupid. This person's story is the classic and simple case of using old methods of finding a job when these methods just don't work that well anymore. I find it amusing that with all the education that this person has, he doesn't realize that the old methods usually work in a very hot economy. A good classic that is always updated is the What Color Is Your Parachute? book. The approaches described in that book would likely get this person very good results once he starts realizing that he should be a little less ambitious to start in terms of what he is looking for and also change his attitude (ie. drop the victim mentality - nobody owes him anything).