How to remain positive while unemployed?

October 30, 2015 6:48 PM

The stress of unemployment and the possibility of not having anymore money to live off of is taking its toll on our health. We seek the support of career coaches and therapists, we apply to jobs, we do the interviews, but almost always another candidate is chosen for the position. How does remain hopeful while in this seemingly endless cycle?

We need an income to survive: rent, food, utilities, etc. There's only so much that I can do while I am in college, but my Girlfriend has been looking for full-time work for two years. All she has been able to find is part-time, low wage contract work, and even that is drying up it seems, despite having a Master's Degree, an Office Administration certificate, and a post-graduate diploma in Human Resource Management.

Seeing that this endless cycle of sending out resumes and cover letters to jobs and never getting hired doesn't appear likely to result in anything positive in the near future, forcing us to lose our apartment, how can we remain hopeful when nothing we do seems to make a difference?

posted by 8LeggedFriend to Work & Money (4 answers total)

I started writing something long, but have a few questions about your level of financial security and immediate safety net before I can think about what kind of hope to talk about:
- How close are you to losing your apartment? Are you able to access social welfare programs? Are your fixed monthly costs as low as possible without making getting to work sites difficult?
- Are your efforts constrained to white- and pink-collar jobs at the moment (or have you already tried dogwalking, house-painting, catering, etc)? (Ironically, there are a lot of ads for HR recruiters, where I am, at least -is that a possibility for your girlfriend? These jobs have a low bar to entry, and pay decently well, although many are on commission; could be a path to a more stable job for your girlfriend though, plus she'd have access to job and employer info.)
- How connected (or alienated) are you from other people (friends, former coworkers, etc)?
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:15 PM on October 30, 2015

You say 'we' but it sounds like you're asking on behalf of your girlfriend so i'll respond accordingly. I'm going through this now and it's awful especially not getting a response to applications. At least she's getting to the interview stage and even getting work. I have sort of accepted that I may likely never get an office job again so I am going for retail (it's all I can get) and doing artistic stuff on the side with a view to starting a business. She needs to be doing other stuff (hobbies, interests). Does she have other ambitions? I would also agree with cotton dress sock and say 'look for something in a different field'. Even if she's working part time in Subway, she can apply to head office via that route when vacancies come up and she has an advantage over outsides because the company knows her and she has 'grass roots' experience to add to her admin skills. A degree is effectively meaningless these days and for these sorts of jobs. It's sort of the expected standard like knowing the alphabet.
posted by ihaveyourfoot at 6:12 AM on October 31, 2015

That is such a tough spot to be in. I remember those years scrambling and it was awful.

Has your girlfriend thought about rustling up a side gig, and maybe starting her own business from there? I mean, are you guys in the kind of a location where she could gin up some work as a freelancer? Office organization, typing transcripts, setting up workflows and filing systems, stuff like that? Get some business cards, take to Craigslist or TaskRabbit, and fill in some gaps that way?
posted by Sublimity at 6:22 AM on October 31, 2015

Your girlfriend may benefit from having a career mentor or a community (online or IRL) of other professionals in her field. Is your girlfriend a member of any professional societies (for HR, something like Society for Human Resource Management)?

Professional societies have yearly dues, which I recognize may make it a bit of a Catch-22 for her to try to join now if she isn't already a member, but they will have great resources available that may enable her to eventually find work in her field. They can help her find a mentor in the HR field who can assist her with job applications, skill building, and networking. I say this as someone who previously neglected to really get involved with my field's professional societies; I'm now involved in three but it was only after joining one that I not only started to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I now also feel more confident in the face of career challenges and job-search hardship.
posted by nightrecordings at 7:01 AM on October 31, 2015