???

[dense isle]

If you're currently employed then you apparently have enough to get a job, just not the ones you're targeting. Here's one possible strategy, which I have used:

1. Build the list of technologies you want to be getting comfortable with. I think you've mostly done this already.
2. Find job postings where you meet about half the requirements and at least one of the ones you don't meet is on your list. Apply.
3. Also apply to one or two of the target ones even if you don't think you qualify yet, just in case.
4. After you've worked at one of these jobs and gained experience with the thing you wanted to gain experience with, go back to step 2 with your new list of current skills. Repeat this loop until you are where you want to be.

The basic idea is that since requirements listings are rarely actually requirements, you can use them to figure out what stuff you'll get to use at the job and thus have employers pay for your learning

Be honest about what you know and don't know. They'll figure it out anyways, and especially for juniors, having a candidate lie or be confidently wrong is a major negative signal

You might get turned down for some but that's expected as part of the process

In terms of response rates, right now is an unusual time (in a bad way) and so it's hard to apply conventional wisdom

Right. So here's the thing: most companies create their job postings by going "uh, I need someone on my team, and what would they be doing? They'll do A, and B, and C of course. Oh, and this week has been D. You know, E would be nice and we've been thinking about F. Ok, great, that's the list!" and they slop that into the requirements list.
Then they do interviews and find a candidate who they like and talk and go "yeah, they don't know B or D but I guess that's actually ok" and give an offer.

It's not a good way to approach hiring but it's extremely common

The ones that have actual requirements lists tend to have only 2 or 3 things in them

And then "these are nice to have"

At the worst you'll just be wasting a little time applying

But largely it's fine. Some companies have known "cooldown timers" measured in months

Let's look at an example job posting that I just pulled from the top of my search results: https://www.dice.com/job-detail/296dfdeb-fb4a-48e1-b900-f29c65af038a?searchlink=search%2F%3Fq%3DReact%26countryCode%3DUS%26radius%3D30%26radiusUnit%3Dmi%26page%3D1%26pageSize%3D20%26language%3Den&searchId=60519f71-f2e7-4ce4-a8b7-842791631c16 This has a crazy number of requirements

I would guess that they would hire someone who has:

• 3 years of experience instead of 5
• a vaguely technical degree
• general experience with react
• general experience with html and css

This is just a guess on my part; I can't say for certain. But they're going to really cut down on the number of candidates they get if they stick to all of that, and usually you get 9 months in and find yourself thinking "maybe we'll never find this theoretical person, and I wish I had someone on my team"

Compare that with this job posting from my company, which I did not write but think is much better 🙂 https://angel.co/company/winnielabs/jobs/1914675-senior-software-engineer-backend
You've got a years of experience guide, and then two technology requirements that are both "something like this". That's how people actually hire.