This story is not about a broken resume. It is about a broken strategy. This job seeker has spent two months firing applications into a void, treating the search like a volume game when the real problem is that their profile tells a story that hiring managers are not equipped to read. The resume is not bad. It is unfocused for the wrong audience.
The core issue is clear: a consulting background with exposure to unsupervised learning, graph analytics, causal modeling, RAG systems, and data pipelines reads as versatile inside a consultancy but as scattered to a product company hiring manager. That manager wants to see depth in one domain, a narrative that says "I solve this specific kind of problem." Instead they see a generalist who has touched everything and mastered nothing in a format that is easy to skim past. The lack of responses is not an ATS ghosting problem. It is a targeting problem. The resume is being read, but it is not compelling enough to warrant a call.
The fix is not a keyword density adjustment. It is a repositioning. This person needs to stop applying blindly to every data science role and start exploring the companies and teams where their exact blend of skills is an asset, not a liability. Consultancy experience translates very well to product companies that value cross-functional fluency and rapid problem-switching, but only if the resume frames it that way. Instead of listing every project, pick the three that align most closely with the target role and build each bullet around the business outcome, not the method. Drop the preprint mention if it does not directly support the narrative. A single co-authorship is a differentiator only when the rest of the story leans into research rigor; otherwise it becomes noise.
The practical takeaway is this: seventy applications with zero responses is not bad luck. It is a signal that the approach needs to change. Start with ten targeted applications to companies where the job description explicitly values cross-domain experience or consulting backgrounds. Tailor each resume to tell one coherent story per company. If that still yields silence, then revisit the resume itself. But do not keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. The data is already telling you the answer.