Finally got a job (here's the do's and dont's)

Context: 10.5 YOE, Marketing lead. I've been looking for a switch since September last year. I'd seen signs of maybe my role or the company itself folding very early and knew 'twas time to bolt. But it's not that easy. Back then - 1 year in a startup meant hey not bad, people still spoke to you and considered your profile. These days, they treat you like Ebola if you've not had your ass stuck in the same place for 3-5 years.

Anyway, so the majority of my time searching for jobs was the shitty Easy Apply or IIMJOBS premium account route. Suprise suprise. It doesn't work. But hey I was still employed and not nearly as motivated as someone who's unemployed.

Cut to layoffs: Got laid off with my whole team and a huge chunk of other leaders. My first layoff, felt hilariously like the last day of school. To the org's credit they gave us 3 month severance, leave encashments and extra months for those who'd been there for 2 years+. In hindsight hearing the horror stories of 2k severance from Byju's. I'm grateful for the nice golden parachute I got. I'll be honest, it contributed heavily to my mental stability. I had time, I had leverage, I didn't have to run for the first shitty opportunity that came my way.

The How I did it (why you struggled through the above stream of consciousness)

• Wrote to 159 founders with one pagers to 35 of them with ideas on how i'd lead their marketing function. 5 replies. 3 interviews. 2 offers - didn't take em cuz they were super early stage or diff cities. This is immediately in month 1 so I've already started feeling icky about not getting great brands to have in my set.
• Easy Applied to 768 (I ran a Gmail search, this is a real number) jobs. 99% no responses or you've been rejected. -Kept changing one letter on my Naukri.com profile, got me 6 calls, 3 interviews and 1 conversion

I think theres a word limit to posts 🥲 following up as comments below.