2,000 applications. 40 interviews. 0 DevOps offers. That's not a volume problem. That's a direction problem. The people landing DevOps roles aren't sending more resumes. They have a public GitHub with a production-grade homelab, a LinkedIn profile that attracts inbound recruiter messages, and they can walk through their infrastructure decisions in an interview without flinching. The application cannon strategy died in 2023. Proof of work replaced proof of effort.