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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Dean" data-source="post: 4600726" data-attributes="member: 9199">Oh, it's much more important than that!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  Like someone said earlier in the thread, job searches are learnable skills.  Look, I decided at 36 to go to law school at night while working.  I was scared to death because I would be graduating at 40 and beginning a brand new career when most of my peers were in their late twenties.  My confidence level was very low, especially living in Michigan, where the employment situation has sucked for a lot longer than the rest of the country.  On top of that, I'm not a natural conversationalist or small talker. I'm VERY shy in large gatherings of people that I don't know.  And while I'm good in courtroom speaking situations and public speaking generally, the idea that my entire future could boil down to the first five minutes of an interview with a total stranger was really freezing me up and making me feel really depressed.  But luckily I had bought some great books on legal job searching, and practiced, practiced, practiced interview questions in front of a mirror, while I was driving, when I was alone in my office, etc...  I kept files and records of my job searches, which really helped me feel better because it made me feel like I was in charge of my job search rather than being a passive participant.  That was a very big part of building confidence for me.  There was a good passage in one of my books that said you have to approach the interview with the belief that you have something really great to offer your employer and it's your job to make sure that they don't miss out on hiring you.  Corny, yes.  Effective at changing my mindset and keeping it upbeat? Absolutely.Long story short, I was able to get my dream job; but it was hard work and came with a lot of anxiety.  Don't give up, and don't let the frustration keep you from offering some company a great employee.Sad to say, that's not realistic.  Most people change jobs/careers something like 7 times on average, or so I've heard (I'm on job #6 since I graduated college).  You can't rely on your company to be around your entire working life, and so you need to be prepared to move on, so you don't go through the stress you're feeling now.  Besides, the biggest pay raises most people get in their professional lives come from switching companies.  And social skills are important for most jobs.  At some point you may have to have meetings with clients, and your employer will expect you to be able to do that.  If it's that much of a problem, think about taking a Dale Carnegie course, or some other public speaking class; I've had people I know swear by them.  I debated in high school and college, and it totally changed me from being pathologically frightened of public speaking to actually enjoying it, so I can see the value of taking a public speaking course.</blockquote>

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