Toowoomba millennial Renee Perrow was willing to try anything, but even with youth on her side, she struggled to find stable employment for eight long years.
"It was a roller-coaster," she said.
"I'd go for one job and I'd get knocked back, or I'd go as far as to get a trial and then I'd get knocked back and knocked back."
Now 27, Ms Perrow has landed a full-time job, but she admits if it were not for the leg up from a charity, she would still be volunteering for Centrelink payments and sending out endless job applications.
"It gets very depressing at times, but then you've got to get back on the horse and do it all over again," she said.
Without enough money for university study or vocational training, Ms Perrow said her options were limited.
'I had nothing'
Ms Perrow said she "came out of high school with nothing".
"I needed someone to give me an opportunity to gain those skills, someone to say, 'This is how we do this', and Lifeline has definitely done that."
Ms Perrow is now a manager at a Toowoomba Lifeline store after graduating from a skilling workers program through Lifeline Darling Downs.
Its goal is to train people who have been unemployed for a long time.
Angela Klein, the business services manager at Lifeline, said this group of people was an untapped market.
"A lot of people do have depression and anxiety when they've been knocked back for jobs many, many times," Ms Klein said.
"A lot of people have personal issues or family issues, there might be domestic violence … [there are] all these barriers that have just prevented them from having sustainable employment."
Unemployment above average
Toowoomba's unemployment rate is higher than the Queensland average at 5.5 per cent compared with a statewide unemployment rate of 4.6 per cent.
The region's youth jobless rate is even higher at 7.7 per cent.
But the number of long-term unemployed people is increasing, according to Regional Development Australia (RDA), with data showing 67 per cent of people in Queensland who are unemployed have been so for more than 12 months.
Ms Klein said, with investment, long-term unemployed people were a solid option for employers who were short on labour.
"A lot of people who are trainees, they've never learned to sell themselves as a product, so they don't know the skills that they have," she said.
"We teach them how to behave in an interview, how to talk to your boss if you've got an issue because a lot of people don't know those communication skills.
"They don't know that the skills that they have are saleable products."
Each Lifeline program trains 13 people in retail and 11 in business distribution over six months.
Participants learn new skills, which then lead to a paid role within the organisation or a new job.
So far, 75 per cent of the more than 100 trainees have secured gainful employment.
Transferable skills needed
Ms Klein said it had saved the organisation too.
"We have had a very big decline in volunteers since COVID," she said.
"A lot of the volunteer base that we have are elderly. After COVID, they just want to keep themselves safe.
" So having the trainees turning up every single day, knowing that they will be there, is really important so we can keep the doors open."
Joy Mingay, who runs a recruitment agency in Toowoomba, said there were long-term risks if young and unskilled people did not receive the right training.
"[Some] young people who have done six months in ... retail, they've never settled anywhere, and suddenly they're 21," she said.
"They're on adult wages, but they haven't got any real experience.
"I'm worried about those kids slipping through the cracks. An employer is not going to be as interested in paying adult wages."
But Ms Mingay said training programs that offered basic customer skills were invaluable because they were transferable across different industries.
"Say you've worked in retail and you've got good customer service, and you've always thought you wanted to move across to admin," she said.
"Even if you don't have administration skills, if you've got good customer service, you've done cash handling, you've got some computer skills, you're a lot more likely to be able to make that transition because employers are a lot more likely to give you a crack."
