I have been stuck in a very toxic job for the past 2 years. It is an industry which isn’t doing very well at the moment - ESG Consulting. The jobs out there aren’t as much and I whenever I open up a job posting, the YOE just skyrockets. In my first year, entry level jobs were at 0-3 years of experience but now for some reason the same jobs require 4-6 YOE??? I have applied to more than a 100 job postings since last November but have mostly been rejected or when something was on the verge of materialising, been ghosted by recruiters. I am so so done with the job hunt but I know I need a change ASAP. How are you all coping with this?

For more context:

I have been stuck in a very toxic job with toxic bosses for almost two years now. They’re the type that are ready to take credit for things they didn’t do but are the first to shirk responsibility when the project goes south. These are people with >10/15 years of experience (for context - I have 3). You’d expect guidance from them given their YOE but all you get is nitpicking and micromanaging. My firm has a 3 day WFO mandate and my boss randomly calls me up on Teams and asks me to turn on my camera to “check” if I am in the office. All these people know is mindgames. These people have isolated me: given me the same old projects, no team so I basically have to do it by myself and whenever something bad happens, they shirk responsibility. I have wasted the past year because I have learned nothing new and my resume now looks stagnant. These are primarily the reasons why I need to switch. It’s affecting my mental health but since I need to pay my rent and my student loan I cannot quit.