TD;LR- I work blue collar and had no idea how horrible the market is, and my white collar partner is at his wits end and I’m so worried for his mental health.
My partner (28M) has hated his job for a while and started casually looking for a new one last December, and seriously looking for new ones the last 8 months. Every single evening he spends time applying.
He’s a Social media marketer for a non-profit, and has had the same low paying shitty assistant job since graduating from college at 25. (These are his words, not mine). For the past 6 of the months came up so dry with jobs in marketing. He doesn’t want to do non-profit anymore. He decided to switch gears and look into sales job, which he has a little bit of experience doing.
I work blue collar (dog groomer) and landed my dream job within 1 conversation with an ex coworker and a 10 minute phone interview. Our field is notoriously short staffed and no groomer ever has a problem getting a job, ever. (Thanks to the doodle craze.) I’ve never worked white collar, and my only experience with it is via my partner. I’m not gonna lie, I thought for months he was lying about how much time he was looking at jobs cause I was ignorant to how horrid the market truly was….that was until I found the subreddit r/recruitinghell over the summer.
I was cleaning his office a month ago and found a spreadsheet he had made listing 42 jobs he had applied for. I said to him wow, that’s a lot of applications for 8 months! He started laughing and said no, that’s just the last TWO WEEKS.
Again, he hates his job so much he’s throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks, as long as it’s work from home. He makes hardly enough to survive (his words) so he doesn’t care what he does at this point. He’s willing to do hybrid, but absolutely no going into the office.
He’s had a few promising interviews, like third or fourth round ones where it’s him vs a few others. Him and I intentionally don’t get our get out hopes up but still are so sad when they don’t go through. It’s at the point where he doesn’t even tell me about most of his interviews cause he’s so ashamed they don’t pan out.
Then last Friday, we thought he had it in the bag. The sales job was to sell software to nonprofits! Mr. Lowest-self-esteem-ever was beaming after the interview, he said he nailed it. Recruiter interview was yesterday. I woke up this morning to him silently crying. Cue the generic ass email I’ve seen variations being posted on this subreddit.
He does zoom interviews, and we live in a one party consent state so he records them so he can listen back and see where he can improve. He showed me the audio, and I thought he nailed it too!
He literally said this morning “well, that’s my last chance getting a job this year.”
My heart is so broken for him. The longer it goes on, the more he hates his job. His boss. Little things she does drives him insane cause he feels so stuck. He says he has to put in so much effort to not act like he wants to kill himself when he talks to her.
What can I do as his partner to better support him? Unfortunately I don’t make enough to cover both of our bills, otherwise I’d tell him to quit right now. I mentioned quitting and getting unemployment but he doesn’t want to do that either. I don’t even ask him about how it’s going cause he says “I don’t wanna talk about it.” He’s genuinely suicidal over this. He sees a therapist and got put on meds solely because looking for a job is destroying his mental health.
He doesn’t use Reddit, or any social media for that matter, but I’ve showed him the subreddit r/recruitinghell to be like hey babe, you’re not alone! This is happening to everyone! Cause he truly thinks something’s wrong with him. I don’t want to tell him what to do because I don’t know anything about corporate America, and I don’t want to make him feel bad that he’s not doing enough, cause I know he is. Any advice would be welcome