If today is very bad: Samaritans 116 123 · text SHOUT to 85258 · more urgent help
A free repository of practical help

Job searching can affect far more
than your career.

Sleep. Confidence. Money. Relationships.
Physical health. Identity. Mental health.

This is a free repository of practical help, evidence, guidance and support for people looking for work — covering the parts of a long job search that career advice tends not to touch.

You don't need to read everything. Find what you need today.
Type anything — a feeling, a problem, an organisation. Or browse the topics below.

Start here

What would help you today?

Each of these gathers everything on the site about that one thing — what helps now, what is actually happening, the relevant guide sections, and where to get specialist help.

Rejection and setbacks
When the no's stack up, and each one lands harder than the last.
Confidence and self-worth
When months of searching start to feel like a judgement on who you are.
Anxiety and stress
The 3am waking, the tight chest, the dread before you open the inbox.
Sleep
Often the first thing a long search disrupts, and one of the most useful to protect.
Physical health and exercise
Not a wellness cliché. Movement is one of the most accessible, well-supported ways to look after yourself during a difficult search.
Money worries
Knowing exactly where you stand tends to help more than being told it will be fine.
Benefits and financial support
What you may be able to claim, how soon to do it, and why the shame is misplaced.
Isolation and loneliness
Work supplies most people's daily human contact. When it goes, the quiet can arrive quickly.
Relationships and family
What a job loss does to a household, and the conversations that tend to help.
Daily routine and motivation
Work gives us structure without our noticing. When it disappears, deliberately rebuilding some of it can matter.
Long-term unemployment
When it has been months rather than weeks, and the shape of the thing has changed.
Age discrimination
It is real and it is documented. It is not a judgement on your capability.
Returning to work
After a career break, caring, illness or a long gap — finding the way back in.
Career change
When the answer might not be another version of the last job.
CVs, applications and interviews
The mechanics — and why a smaller number of better applications tends to beat volume.
Networking
One of the most important routes into work, and often the one people find hardest to start.
Alternative ways of working
Fractional, freelance, contract, part-time, portfolio — income and engagement while the search continues.
Professional mental-health support
How to get it, what the routes actually are, and why earlier tends to be easier than later.
Health after 50
Hormones, muscle, nutrition — the physical picture that career guides rarely mention.
Emergency and crisis support
If today is very bad, this is the shortest page on the site.

Not sure where to start?

Most people arrive with more than one thing going on

If you cannot neatly name the problem — because it is money and sleep and rejection and confidence all at once — start from where you are instead.

I've just lost my job
The first fortnight, in the order that matters.
Start here →
I've been looking for months
When the advice for week one no longer applies.
Start here →
I'm struggling, but I don't know exactly why
When it isn't one thing. It usually isn't.
Start here →
I'm worried about someone else
For partners, parents, friends and former colleagues.
Start here →

How the library is organised

Four kinds of help

Most people arrive needing one of these four things. The three long-form guides run across all of them.

Help me now

If today is hard. The things that help in the next hour.

Help me understand

What a long search does to a person, and why it feels the way it does.

Help me do something

Practical interventions — routine, movement, money, applications, people.

Find specialist help

Free organisations that do this properly, and how to reach them.

The long-form guides

Three editions, one evidence base

Substantial guides covering the same material through three different lived experiences. The age bands are a rough guide rather than a rule — a 42-year-old with no dependants and a 31-year-old with three children do not necessarily belong in the same bucket, so read whichever fits your situation. You do not have to read one end to end; the topic pages above will send you to the right section.

Starting out & early career
Generally 18–30
Starting out while the system feels broken. Comparison culture, forming a professional identity, and a market that is structurally hard to enter.
Read this edition →
Mid-career & responsibilities
Generally 30–49
When responsibility and uncertainty collide. Dependants, burnout, relationship strain, and searching with no slack in the week.
Read this edition →
Later career & 50+
50 and beyond
Grief, the confidence collapse curve, age discrimination, hormonal health, and how hiring decisions actually get made.
Read this edition →

Help & support directory

Every external organisation on the site, grouped by what you need and with a plain-English line on what each one actually does.

Open the directory →

How we handle evidence

Four labels — research says, evidence suggests, in practice, try this — so you can see at a glance how strong the basis for any statement is.

Read the approach →

Urgent help

If today is very bad, this is the shortest page on the site. Samaritans 116 123, free, 24 hours a day.

Urgent help →

Why this exists

Unemployment is not only an employment problem. It becomes a financial, health, relationship, identity and social one.

Read the argument →

For employers and recruiters

What a long search looks like from the other side, and eight changes to a hiring process that cost almost nothing.

Read this →

About this site

Independent and free. No sponsorship, no affiliate links, nothing for sale. How resources are chosen, and how to report a problem.

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