20 year old man, social anxiety has seriously hurt my employment chances, feeling helpless.

[Atomiser]

Hi, new member here. I'm currently searching for part-time and casual work to fill up my schedule (I only work one night a week) and it has been the most embarrassing experience of my life. I've applied to so many positions in retail and hospitality, and have been declined at every turn. The only experience I have in a cafe setting is a couple months working a year ago and I was terrible at it. I couldn't make coffee, I made so many mistakes constantly, and I was terrible at customer service because I looked depressed apparently. I tried so hard to improve but I was let go because of how incompetent I was at a job that a 15 year old could do.
Since that's some of the only experience I have I tried applying to other cafes, of the trials I had my hands were constantly shaking I couldn't follow their simple instructions and make coffee like they wanted and when I had a trial to be a kitchen hand I couldn't even cut freaking banana bread properly, and time is ticking I'm 20 years old and have no transferable skills, nothing I can put on my resume and be proud of.

I just hate feeling so helpless, like I have nothing to offer and am simply just a burden on these employers. One of them nearly laughed in my face when he was interviewing, the falseness of their platitudes and their feigned sincerity when they reject me just makes me feel worse. I can handle a girl rejecting me just fine, I'm used to that, it's just with work I can't do anything. I just want to be normal.

[BluBelle]

Hey Atomiser, I'm so sorry you haven't had much luck finding employment. I really feel for you, it's such an awful feeling when you're trying really hard but just can't seem to get it down perfectly.

Given that you describe your anxiety as social anxiety, are you determined to work in a customer-facing industry like hospitality or retail? There are entry-level jobs in data entry, call centres, fast food delivery, cleaning, etc that don't require previous experience.

Do you have an idea of what you might want to do for work long-term? Study is an option too, and employers tend to be understanding if you have less workplace experience if you can show you were studying during that time.

Another option is to volunteer. It gets some experience on your resume, builds confidence and I know lots of people who've found paid permanent work out of it - either with the organisation or through connections you make there. It's obviously not ideal if you need money to make ends meet, but if you're living at home it might be ok? I think SEEK has a website just for volunteers.