A 6% callback rate is not the problem. The real issue is that you are treating interviews as a skill to be mastered through repetition, when the process itself is designed to resist that approach.
You have applied to 130 roles and heard back from eight. That is not a failure of volume or persistence. It is a signal that the system you are navigating rewards adaptability over routine. And you have already identified why. Each interview process is different. There is no standard playbook, no consistent format, no reliable way to build "muscle memory" when every company runs a different drill. The hiring manager round is the one constant, and you have improved there. That is not a small win. It means you are learning to connect with the people who make decisions. That skill will carry further than any amount of whiteboard practice.
So should you pause applications? Yes, but not to "reassess your approach" in the abstract. Pause to stop treating interviews as a numbers game. You have already proven you can get the callback. The bottleneck is not your resume or your reach. It is the mismatch between the preparation you are doing and the variety of the process you are facing. Instead of trying to prepare for every possible format, focus on the parts that are actually predictable: your ability to tell a clear story about your work, your comfort with explaining trade-offs, and your capacity to ask sharp questions that reveal how a team thinks. Those are the elements that survive any format change.
Here is the concrete next step. Take two weeks off from applying. Use that time to write down exactly what you learned from each of those eight interviews, not just the technical questions, but the moments where the conversation shifted, the points where you felt unsure, and the questions you wished you had asked. Then map those lessons to the one consistent part of the process: the hiring manager conversation. You already know that round is where you can improve. Double down on it. When you resume applying, you will not be searching for a system that does not exist. You will be walking in with a sharper understanding of what you actually control.