Being in the IT job market off and on for the last 18 months and being interviewed at about 40 companies in one of the major tech hubs in the USA, gave me a similar experience as the OP. I came to several conclusions:
1) In my case trendiness is more valuable than the school you've graduated from (graduated from a school overseas that nobody in the USA heard of). I worked for one of the companies in the area, notorious for its difficult tech interviews and I got a bunch of calls from recruiters (including from Google) during my tenure there and immediately after I left. Two years and few short gigs at not-that-cool-companies later, I don't get that amount of calls.
2) Most of the "technical" recruiters have no clue how to evaluate technical candidates. For many of them the main (for some the only) way to judge about your skills is how much money you make/how much money you want. I'm talking about deep understanding what engineer do, I'm talking about basic stuff.
3) If you have 1-2 short gigs for the last couple of years you are under the suspicion that you can not be trusted enough to be hired as a FTE.
4) If you are unemployed at the moment of the interview - look 3)
I believe now that hiring in the IT industry is somehow a stochastic process. I was hired and got offers from reputable companies and organizations and rejected even at the first round of interviews by no-name/less-than-mediocre-companies. Go figure.
1) In my case trendiness is more valuable than the school you've graduated from (graduated from a school overseas that nobody in the USA heard of). I worked for one of the companies in the area, notorious for its difficult tech interviews and I got a bunch of calls from recruiters (including from Google) during my tenure there and immediately after I left. Two years and few short gigs at not-that-cool-companies later, I don't get that amount of calls.
2) Most of the "technical" recruiters have no clue how to evaluate technical candidates. For many of them the main (for some the only) way to judge about your skills is how much money you make/how much money you want. I'm talking about deep understanding what engineer do, I'm talking about basic stuff.
3) If you have 1-2 short gigs for the last couple of years you are under the suspicion that you can not be trusted enough to be hired as a FTE.
4) If you are unemployed at the moment of the interview - look 3) I believe now that hiring in the IT industry is somehow a stochastic process. I was hired and got offers from reputable companies and organizations and rejected even at the first round of interviews by no-name/less-than-mediocre-companies. Go figure.