The never respond makes me think it could be a cover letter/resume problem - check resources for those. And like other people mention, contacts help when your resume isn’t stellar. Consider reaching out to people directly on LinkedIn (I did this for a local engineering company that didn’t have any jobs posted… but they still hired me). Might help if resume or cover letter is getting filtered out by AI during the process.

Rock climbing assuming you have a little spare change for a membership & a local gym. Go boulder. Folks are chill.

Local sports leagues. I was chatting with a friend who was talking about how much fun they’re having with softball… Including how they can now hit the ball 50% of the time.