I'm a career-long (20 years) non-profit employee. I was mostly in marketing and communications, but my main thing for my whole career was about retention and loyalty and building community around my employers in order to fight the good fight.

I really want to move on and work in for profit. I've been in back to back toxic non-profit workplaces and I'm making roughly $30k less than I would in the for profit sector. I know I could get another non-profit gig tomorrow if I just asked for one, but I don't want that.

I've been searching for 7 months (I've applied to roughly 60 jobs in that time) and the few people who interview me really like me. They tell me that they will recommend me for other gigs, but that I'm not the right fit for them. I've started asking what other jobs a person like me should apply to and they all say they don't know.

I'm so frustrated. I keep going to networking events in the for-profit sector in my city and they say that they're desperately looking for people who don't just have the technical knowledge (which I also have). They want people who know/have

- Human centered business processes

- Empathy as a management skill

- Public speaking

- Networking

- Innovative problem solving

- Excellent communication skills

- Great people and soft skills

But then I'm never the right fit. I've worked so hard my whole career, had a lot of really big deal successes and it feels like I'm not communicating that well enough, or that I'm communicating the wrong things. I just had another "we love you, we'll recommend you for other stuff" conversation and I feel utterly at a loss.

What do I do next? Because what I've been doing clearly isn't working. Initially I didn't want to do any retraining because, to be honest, after a lifetime of working in non-profit I can't afford education or to be unemployed for as long as it would take to get a new skillset. But also, I've spend 20 years doing work I love for people who treat me horribly and I genuinely love what I do. I just want to go somewhere that values their stakeholders.