Additionally, and this is for everyone, sometimes the traditional fill-out-the-application-and-hope process is just never going to work, especially for political or public employee jobs.
There's an alternative. The basics:
1. Write letters to as many community leaders as you can identify and announce that you are seeking ADVICE and COUNSEL about a career, and you picked them as a success story and community leader whose accomplishments you admire or respect. Ask if it would be possible to meet with them at their convenience just to talk. You want the people at the top of an organization, executive directors or board members, not the people lower on the chain.
2. Have a nontraditional resume ready. It can include your degrees and whatnot, but should be heavily based on your traits. Lift it right from the INTP profile if you must. It should be conversational, not a boring list of bullshit.
3. If you get an appointment with someone, send them that resume, with a thank you note for their time.
4. Take additional material with you to the appointment, along with additional copies of both your nontraditional resume and your boring traditional one. Your new friend might want to share it.
5. At the interview, stress you're taking your time to find a job that's a good fit for your personality and skills. Stress also that you're not looking to him or her for a job literally, you're looking for guidance. That opens the door to a profitable, focused discussion.
This works. It works because a great many people are pleased to indulge their own beliefs that they have a great deal of good advice and counsel to offer others. It works because you are exposed in a one-on-one way to decision-makers you'd never get to see following the traditional human resources interview path. It works because while the person you're talking with may not have a job, he or she may have a friend or associate in another company who has a need you can fill, and so he gets to be useful twice in one conversation by helping you and helping his friend. It works because the person may not have anything for you immediately but, when a position comes up where a good brain, good work ethic, and no-bullshit mentality are required, the human resources path gets chucked and word goes out that "Screw all that, I want that Jones guy that was in here last month."
I've done this. It's not INTP easy, except that if you strip your own emotions out of it, it's just a process: Identify leaders, write letters, create a different kind of resume, send the letters, go to the appointments, and follow up any leads that come. A referral from anyone like this to someone else automatically increases your chances for hiring at the next, arranged interview.
Make sense?
