It has been four months. You are starting to wonder if something is actually wrong with you. Before you spiral further, let's talk about what is actually normal.
There is no single universal number, because it depends on your field, location, experience, and how much time you can actually give the search. That said, for entry-level roles in a competitive market, three to six months is common, not unusual, even for genuinely strong candidates.
What matters more than the raw number of weeks is whether you are seeing forward movement. More responses than when you started? Making it further into interview processes than a month ago? A search that is slowly improving is in a very different position than one that has been completely flat for months.
If your search has been genuinely flat, few or no responses for an extended stretch, treat that as a real signal, not bad luck. It usually points to something specific and fixable: a CV not communicating your value, applying to mismatched roles, or a lack of visible proof of your skills.
Audit your actual activity honestly. Ten applications over two months is very different from fifty targeted applications in the same period. Low output disguised as "a long search" is one of the most common, and most fixable, causes.
Widen or narrow your target based on what your own data is telling you. Applying broadly and getting nothing? Narrow to roles you are genuinely matched for. Applying narrowly and hearing nothing? Widen what you will consider, at least as a way in.
Take care of your mental state on purpose. Prolonged rejection genuinely wears people down, and that exhaustion leaks into interviews in ways that are hard to hide.
Your next step: count your actual applications from the last two weeks, honestly. If the number is low, that is your real first fix, before anything else. The TAS Employability Assessment will help you tell the difference between a stuck market and a fixable gap, and a long search is exactly when our free Career Community, full of people in the same stretch, makes the biggest difference.
