I have an unusual background and I'm struggling to succeed in my current company and struggling to get interviews.

TL;DR: IT manager straight out of uni, turned English teacher while traveling, self-taught web development while living abroad. Landed a job at an agency in Amsterdam, likely to be fired soon for lack of work despite glowing feedback from all colleagues. Can't get interviews because of unusual background.

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Hi everyone, thanks for reading and sorry for the wall of text.

My background:

I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) from a top-ranked MIS program in the US with a focus on foreign languages (French and Chinese) and programming (Java).

My family's business had explosive growth just as I was graduating and I was asked to manage the IT side of things. I was in WAY over my head and I know this probably rubs some people the wrong way. I was under-qualified and got my job through nepotism (btw it was a 100% family-owned healthcare company). I worked there for 3 years, almost suicidal with stress all the time, but I left on a high note, having successfully managed the transition from "mom and pop" IT to SME-level IT. One example was moving off AT&T email to private MS Exchange, and another was virtualizing servers that had been physical and sitting on the ground in closets to a co-location facility. This was done primarily via an MSP, but I also built up a competent team of field techs. network techs, and project managers. I also helped manage staff at offices during transitions and really just did anything that needed doing, which included responding to 3AM alarms at the office, and dealing with irate patients. With all that done, I moved on feeling good about the work I had done.

I pursued my Mandarin studies in Taiwan while managing the transition part-time and remotely for a few months and then became a full-time English teacher while studying. I did this for 3 years and then decided I wanted to re-enter IT in the West. So, I started studying web development (MERN stack).

I studied for about 18 months, completed a bunch of courses, built some apps, and wrote a popular supplementary guide on JavaScript for the highest-rated MERN "bootcamp" on Udemy which was officially added to the course. Then I started applying for jobs in my new home, the Netherlands.

I landed a job at an agency really quickly actually, but likely mostly due to a connection I had with an outgoing senior at the company. However, they did always mention that they were really impressed by my code test and started me at a mid-level software engineer position.

My situation:

I have been "on the bench" at the agency for about 8 months. They started me on a Salesforce project with no mentor, guide, docs, buddy, or anything. I was tasked to write a lot of ISML and SASS, both of which I had never seen. They knew this. Needless to say, it didn't go well and I was informed that I was taken off the project during a heads-up with my team. Cool. No feedback or anything. Publicly embarrassing.

Since I went on the bench, I began building an app to help a team at a major banking client do some data visualization. I had never done any data viz before, but I like it, and after a lot of work, I demo'd the app to the client and they bit. They wanted to move forward with it.

Today, my boss told me that despite the client liking the app, it will not be enough work to justify my position and it has no impact on my situation. As it stands, I have one tiny chance left to work at a client, and, if that fails, I'm out.

I've been slowly, but consistently, putting my CV out there and talking to recruiters for months. I have been entirely unsuccessful at getting into a meaningful conversation about a job opportunity, let alone an interview. My CV is almost always rejected out-of-hand. This is especially frustrating as I know many software guys and I've seen the work of "seniors" and I know that I measure up. I firmly believe I would be an excellent catch for a company, especially at a junior position (which I would be satisfied with).

I'm a bit at wit's end now, especially now that my homeland, the USA, is in utter turmoil, borders are mostly closed around the world, and I really don't have a lot of savings after working at East Asian salary levels for 5 years and traveling a lot.

My question:

So, Reddit, any advice besides suck it up and grind it out? In particular, how can I get into an actual conversation with a person of importance these days? Whenever I converse with a technical person, they are always like, "What the hell? How can you not find work?"

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