The potential problems are quite large:
- are you located where the jobs are?(visa, relocation required?)
- do you speak the language of the company?(e.g. are you applying in Germany without german?)
- Are you applying for junior positions? or any position?
- is the market/request for testers limited in the area?
- based on their job descriptions, how well do you match the criteria? or do you apply to anything you see?
- I think many jobs rely on networking - an employee recommending someone they know. Have you been doing any of that?
- when applying do you personalize the resume/cover letter to match the needs of the company?
- are you applying via a third party or the company site?(some companies only advertise on many sites but don’t regularly check them).
- some companies have a slower process than others. I was contacted after 1 week and up to 3 months for applications I’ve done.
- have you contacted back any of the companies that rejected you to ask for feedback?
- have you tried getting through to recruiters/consultancies?
- there’s also a trend of ghost jobs, which can take up to half of the existing positions: Job boards are still rife with 'ghost jobs'. What's the point?
- companies use automatic resume filtering, without a human involved; do you add enough keywords to match the job requirements? Linkedin shows for some jobs you match X out of Z criteria for the job. Some words can be really specific.
- have you been at job fairs or events to try and meet people from the company directly?
- did you go to and register with the local employment agency? sometimes they recommend people to companies and companies get incentives to hire them;
- are you doing any testing experiences meanwhile? did you try to be part of courses, training, or classes? code some automation tools to support testing or practice testing on free open-source applications?