It's coming up to 2 years since my DH was made redundant from his tech management job. He has many years experience but is approaching 50, and suspects his age is a barrier to getting offers of work. He's had verbal offers a couple of times, which then didn't lead to anything for various reasons. He's now sick of applying for jobs and just getting ghosted or getting rejections, or being rejected after several rounds of interviews. He's applied for 250+ jobs - he doesn't believe in the blanket auto-apply methods many use, and just applies for things which are 90-100% in line with is skills and experience, including the kind of jobs which he was doing at the start of his career.
He's.been interviewed by maybe 30 companies during this time, usually does really well at interviews and has got to the final round many times, but no offer. Lately it's been getting him down - he feels demoralised and demotivated, and doesn't feel he can give a good interview any more. Ultimately, he thinks he should call it quits and do something else.
He has a couple of side projects which he could develop, and he's looked into doing some intensive re-training in a practical trade, which will cost money and maybe a month of his time and then be self-employed. My freelance job doesn't bring in much - he's always been the main earner - and he earned a lot - which worked out well for a couple of decades. We're in a lot of debt now.
I want to encourage him in the best way possible, and I think it's a good idea to retrain.
BUT do you think he should continue with applications (I do all the searches) with the risk of being even more demoralised, but with the glimmer of possibility he might get back into a high-wage corporate job, whilst also retraining...
OR
Should he throw all his energies into retraining and setting up a new venture? There'll be no guarantee of regular work initially as well as a lot less money, but at least he'd be doing something new and feeling positive, so his energy might help him succeed.
I'd appreciate hearing any success stories of people in similar situations!