A Year in the Trenches of the UK Job Hunt

A year in the trenches of the UK job market.
Night shifts, broken relationship, burnout.
Still swinging.

That opening could stand on its own. It captures the blunt reality more honestly than any polished corporate statement ever could. But here is the part nobody prepares you for. Too many of us are living this and pretending it is fine. We are silently fighting battles with confidence, stability, identity, and energy, and we are asked to stay positive while doing it. We are encouraged to keep our voices calm, our LinkedIn updates filtered, and our emotions professional. Strength has somehow become synonymous with silence. That is not resilience. That is suffocation.

I did not go looking for a new career because I disliked my work or lost interest in growth. I went looking because my circumstances were crushing the parts of my life that actually matter. Working nights is not just tiring. It is corrosive. People romanticise night shifts as quiet, focused, disciplined. You hear comments like, “At least you avoid morning traffic,” or “Nice to get paid extra while everyone sleeps.” On paper, it sounds manageable. In reality, it slowly rearranges your life until your only consistent patterns are exhaustion and repetition. You wake up tired. You eat because you have to. You shower because you need to. You go to work because you cannot afford not to. Then you collapse and repeat. It is not living. It is surviving. It slowly narrows your world until even simple things feel out of reach.

When your life runs in reverse, relationships strain. Not because there is no love, but because you are permanently unavailable. Friends stop inviting you places, not out of malice, but because you do not fit into the routine of the waking world. You miss gatherings, dinners, weekends, and even everyday connection. The people you care about slowly drift. They live forward and you live backwards. It is isolating in a way that creeps, not crashes. You do not see it happening. You just suddenly realise you missed life while trying to earn the right to live it.

It cost me more than sleep. It cost me connection. The end of a relationship is never simple, and I will not pretend this journey caused everything, but it played its part. You cannot be fully present for someone else when you barely have energy left for yourself. I could not show up when I wanted to, even though I cared deeply. I was working while life was happening for everyone else. That type of guilt sits heavy. It becomes part of your motivation. It becomes a promise to yourself: never again will work be the reason you cannot show up for someone you care about.

So yes, I started looking for my next step because I wanted a better life. Not luxury. Not ego. Just a normal schedule again. A routine where health, connection, and growth were possible. A future where I could turn up for my life instead of sleeping through it.

What I walked into was a job market that feels like a lottery played on repeat.

I knew competition existed. Everyone does. But knowing is not the same as experiencing it daily. Eighty to three hundred applicants for every role is not an occasional spike. It is now the baseline. Add in automated filters, AI CV screening, and hiring processes that sometimes feel designed to reduce human interaction to the smallest possible amount, and suddenly you realise you are competing not only with people, but with algorithms, volume, and fatigue. Applications disappear into systems. Rejections arrive without explanation. Sometimes you receive nothing at all, which somehow hurts more than a no.

That silence is heavy. It creates doubt in places you never questioned before. You rewind your experience in your head. You check your achievements. You review your qualifications. You double check your portfolio. You refine your writing. You fix your LinkedIn headline again. You do everything the advice articles say. And when nothing changes, you start asking harder questions. Is there something wrong with my CV? With my experience? With my approach? With me?

And then you remember moments like the one I had. A recruiter telling me I was perfect for a role. Perfect skills. Perfect experience. Perfect profile. But rejected because of location. That same job reappeared twice again in the same year. If I had been given a chance, perhaps they would not still be searching. You cannot help but think about that reality when doubt creeps in.

I took the advice seriously. I rebuilt everything. I refreshed my portfolio. I redesigned my personal brand. I strengthened my tone of voice. I refined my positioning. I reviewed my CV with a senior marketing leader. I improved my presentation. I completed professional development. I earned my Chartered Institute of Marketing membership and continued toward Chartered Marketer status. I showed up online. I stayed consistent. I networked. I read. I learned. I did not coast. I moved forward even while exhausted.

And still, progress did not move the way effort suggested it would.

This is not a complaint. It is context. There are thousands of hard-working, capable people doing everything right and still struggling to move forward. The system is stretched. Recruiters are overwhelmed. Companies are cautious. Processes prioritise volume over nuance. And the people caught in the middle are doing their best to push without breaking.

The emotional cost is real. When you wake up tired every day, when you repeat the same routine, when your health dips and your confidence wobbles, when your personal life cracks under the weight of your schedule, you start to feel trapped. It is not just “finding a new job.” It becomes a battle for your future identity. It becomes the fight to reclaim your time, your energy, your relationships, your self-belief. It becomes the quiet war of staying hopeful without losing realism and staying motivated without burning out completely.

There were days I nearly gave up. Not because I lacked ambition, but because I ran out of oxygen. Doubt is not loud. It is subtle. It shows up when you are brushing your teeth. It appears when you refresh your inbox. It sits with you when you close your eyes after a shift. It asks questions like, “What if this is just how life is now?” That question hurts because deep down you know you want and deserve better. The only thing that stopped me from giving up was remembering why I started. I refuse to live a life where exhaustion makes me absent. I refuse to miss another real moment because work consumed all my energy. I refuse to settle for a routine that does not allow me to show up fully for people I love.

That determination is not glamorous. It does not post well on social media. It is not inspirational in the usual sense. It looks like discipline when no reward is in sight. It looks like rewriting your CV again. It looks like sending another application when you feel numb. It looks like holding onto your belief in your value when the world is not giving you external validation. It looks like grit.

There are a lot of us out here in the same position. Capable. Qualified. Driven. Tired. Trying anyway. We are not lazy. We are not entitled. We are not unskilled. We are navigating a market that demands persistence at a level that previous generations rarely experienced. That is not negativity. It is honesty. Recognising the difficulty does not make us weak. It helps us stand back up without blaming ourselves for circumstances we do not control.

The truth that matters most is this: you are not alone. If you are job searching right now and feel tired, drained, disconnected, or stuck, you are not failing. You are in a moment where the system is difficult, crowded, and automated, and you are still fighting for a better life. That is strength. That is character. That is proof you believe in your future even when the path feels steep.

Progress sometimes feels invisible until suddenly it is not. One opportunity can shift everything. One conversation can change direction. One yes can rewrite months of frustration. Until that moment arrives, you keep moving. Not with blind optimism. Not with fake positivity. With grounded, stubborn perseverance. With the quiet confidence that you bring value. With the knowledge that you deserve a career that fits the life you want to live.

It has been a long, heavy year, but I am still here and still fighting. If any part of this feels familiar to you, I hope you are still holding your ground and pushing forward too. We are not just waiting for opportunities. We are preparing ourselves to be ready when the right one comes. We are building the version of ourselves that will step into the future we are fighting for.

And when we get there, the journey will not have been a setback. It will have been the foundation.