The eternal Black Hole called Job Search

Everyone in this world goes through this phase atleast once unless the person is really wealthy and aimless in life. Surprisingly, I have been getting back to this phase every year since 2004. It never gets rid of me and I never get tired of it and the irony is we get along pretty well. I have now become a Master at Job Searching techniques and I sometimes end up thinking that I should probably start a firm that would help others with Job Search. I still ace up my sleeves when it comes to job search, sometimes I have been lucky and sometimes it has been hard on me. Speaking Chronologically:

1.  May 2004 - After finishing 2nd year of college, I feel that I'm a grown up and should stop pestering my parents for my luxuries and I am on the roads searching for some part-time jobs. Dubiously following Sapota's advise - I take up a "Faltoo" job where my earnings hardly met my necessities.

2. January 2005 - I decide to take another path and start tutoring while I study for my GRE and earned quite a bit but that ended very soon when the high school kid finished his High School.
3. May 2006 - Straight out of college, I decide to pursue Masters. Having found a 3 months leisure, I attended several interviews for Call Center jobs and failed and finally ended doing Event Management. 
4. August 2006 - I come over to the US, my hunt for on-campus jobs and assistantships start; I was the first one to start and the last one to end up with one.
5. December 2007 - Realizing that I would have enough time for next Summer, I search for the jackpot Internships and off campus jobs
6. June 2008 - I decide to move out to Kansas and start searching for jobs in KANSAS
7. 2009 - Tired of working Part time, I search for a full time job (all year long)
8. 2010 - The search continues
9. 2011 - Madhuri leaves Kansas and now I'm searching again

A typical day during this phase would include atleast 10 emails saying that you application has been rejected and atleast 50 of them saying that "We have received your resume". Whilst I'm not qualified for most of them, rest of them do not like "International Aliens". I'm still not tired of wearing the Black suit over and over to look professional. As an insult to an injury, I graduated from Grad School in 2008 which I feel is the worst time that one could ever graduate. I have composed thousands of emails, formatted my resume atleast 20 times and tailored 50 different cover letters to suit different jobs but I still feel I'm an under-achiever. I ruled out speculations regarding 3-page resumes, skepticisms about international hiring and still I find myself nowhere closer to those numerous job postings floating out there.

Everytime, I talk to someone - I get to hear "I hear the Job Market is good these days"! Hell yes, Can't you see I'm working on 5 different jobs simultaneously, Do you care for one? It looks to me like 1000s of my emails and 10,000s of my applications are just going down the drain. They set out in the right direction, but they never are reverted - just like the ships entering the Bermuda Triangle and never coming back. Some said, your resume is still being reviewed, some said the position has been offered to someone else, some said they closed the position, very very few said they'd offer me the position and most of them never responded. I always wondered why they responded back using Postal mails to say that I was not selected for the interview process. Some people, however, make it look like a cake walk off course through the back door referrals while some join the racketed firms with no option left and take up a challenge disguising 5-15 years of their life. These people should enter the Ripley's Believe it or not contest.

The whole application process starts with Google searching for jobs in my area and the process goes to an extent that I end up at wikipedia searching for local companies with Careerbuilder, Linkedin and several others being the usual pit stops. Rarely, I make it to the interview process and then the merry begins. It starts with "Tell Me about yourself" and it ends with "You'll hear back from us soon". I'm tired of answering the questions: What are your strengths and weaknesses and I'm falling short of instances that would explain situations when I had a problem at work and how I overcame it. Yes, I am a team player and I love conversations. No, my bosses never had any complaints against me and never did I cause any problems to my co-workers. I know A, B, C, C++, JAVA, COBOL, VB, .NET, SAP, TCP/IP, YAMAHA 2.5 and everything that you can name and you can pay me just 25K an year.

Good Luck to the folks who are in searching phase and applause for the ones who have been through it successfully.