> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month.
Did you get any offers yet? It seems the issue is not lack of interviews but lack of offers. Many companies are looking for a goldilocks candidate and are happy to pass on anything that doesn't match their ideal candidate
I got laid off at the end of last year and am currently interviewing for Staff+ DevOps/Platform Engineer type roles. I definitely feel this. I've had a decent flow of recruiter inquiries and had multiple companies go 2-3 rounds of interviews deep with me (not counting the initial "do you have a pulse" recruiter screen calls). Then the communication always seems to dry up and I'm left to wonder what box I failed to check on their hiring rubric.
Semi related, holy hell do companies have a lot of interview rounds these days. It seems pretty standard to spread 5-6 Teams calls over the course of a month. I get that these are high salary, high impact roles and you want to get it right. But this feels really excessive. And I'm not talking about FAANG tech giants here. It's everyone, from startups to random midsize insurance companies.
I just had back to back round 6 interviews. Both companies have 8 rounds. And yes, not FAANG.
And a lot of it is networks as opposed to applying to a job position. My last position--that I had for many years--was reaching out to someone knew for not even a posted position and having one created for me.