>> You go to some jobs website. You click the button that says "apply", 
>> and it tells you "your CV has been forwarded".
> 
> Fail!  You should check and double check the job description and update 
> your CV to match before applying to each job.

1. Most of these websites don't allow you to do that. (You can only have 
one version of your CV - or sometimes 3 or something.)

2. I don't have time to write thousands of custom versions of my CV.

3. Usually the jobs I'm applying for are so tangentally related to what 
I'm actually after that it's dubious that I *could* make my CV look any 
more relevant than it already does (i.e., not very).

> Simply sending an exact 
> copy of the same CV to everywhere that sounds interesting is a recipe 
> for failure.

I don't have a lot of choice here. It took *months* to get my CV to the 
stage it's at now. God only knows how long it would take to customise it 
for every single job I've ever applied for. And it would be just my luck 
that I'd end up missing out important information or adding spelling 
mistakes. By having only one CV, I can work on making it a very strong 
CV. By having millions, I dilute that effort.

>> You never hear back. What else can you do?
> 
> If you are sure your CV is the best it can be then just keep searching 
> and apply for more jobs.  More jobs come up daily so don't worry.  You 
> can get monster.co.uk to automatically email you new jobs that match 
> your criteria every day, very useful.

Monster currently sends me one email roughly every 6 months containing 
one not-very-relevant job vacancy.

I guess if that isn't a clear sign that you're looking for the wrong 
job, what is?

> Apply for more jobs.

See above.

>>   "We will accept anybody who applies."
>>
>> Sure, seems completely plausible to me. :-P
> 
> Depends who else has applied.

We're talking about the investment branch of Lloyds TSB, in the 
financial district of London. I doubt they're short of applicants.

> When we were trying to get an Engineer 
> for our office here in Munich we had to work really hard to just find 4 
> or 5 people to bring in for interview, this was after having advertised 
> on monster.de and in several newspapers.  None of the ones we 
> interviewed were particularly great (an electrical engineer who has 
> never used an oscilloscope, wtf!), we had to take someone as we 
> desperately needed another person - in the end our company got a 
> recruitment freeze just before we were about to offer him the job!

Ouch. Sounds like a lot of fun...

>> I might as well go apply to be the CEO of Sony BMG. I'd have as much 
>> chance of success.
> 
> Now for that job your CV is definitely completely wrong.  By a very very 
> long way.

It's also definitely completely wrong for a job that demands a PhD - you 
know, with it not mentioning a PhD anywhere and all...

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