Self-taught developer struggling to get interviews

[untold crow]

This is actually not my resume, but my friends. They are self-taught but have been struggling to find a job in 2 years. Please give some tips on how they can improve their resume. I have already told them their personal website needs a lot of work, they can do more hackathons for projects, more open source contributions, stuff like that, but they are still open to more ideas. They get very little responses from applications <5% response rate. Their "current" job is also one that was actually left in 2021, but they are afraid companies will ignore them if they haven't worked in 2 years. (will that cause an issue with background check, even though you can just mark it as do not contact previous employer?) Also, their 2 jobs are at the same place, but they split it to show they were taking on more coding work.

[dusty fable]

its possible it could be a problem in a background check but also a general lying issue

their project bullet points (or lack thereof) are not good

“Reduced feedback loop time…” by how much how?

“enabled email notifications”.. how? using what? was this coded or is this just a button click?

[untold crow]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll relay it to them

They are also wondering if requiring remote as a junior eng will decrease their prospects significantly

[dusty fable]

yeah probably

maybe not a lot at mid-size or smaller companies ?