I have a PhD in the social sciences. This means I'm unemployable.
I assumed having a PhD would make me hard to employ. I didn't think it'd make me entirely unemployable.
That's fine, I'll have to adapt. Eventually I'll adapt my way into a tent in a ravine, but at least I'll have adapted. I'm staying positive here, people.
In the meantime, I'm whiling away the hours doing some math based on a few wild assumptions:
My having a PhD makes me an auto-reject for the vast majority of automated systems. Let's say the error rate there is 1/1000. That means 1 in 1000 applications will make it through to a human.
My having a PhD makes me an auto-reject for the vast majority of humans. Let's say the error rate there is 1/50 (there are some generous/very foolish humans).
My having a PhD makes me an auto-reject in an interview. Let's say the error rate there is 1/20. For all I know it's 100%, because I've been trying for 2.5 years to get a job and I've had one interview. But we're making some very wild assumptions here.
So, 1/1000 * 1/50 * 1/20 = 0.00001%.
That's a 0.00001% chance of being employed per application.
That's 10,000 applications to achieve a 1% chance of employment.
How many applications can I do in a day? Even spamming every site I can find, let's say I can do 50 a day. That's nine months of doing 50 applications every weekday. That'd give me a 1% chance of employment.
We haven't even narrowed the search down based on criteria like 'jobs I can actually do,' let alone 'jobs I would actually not hate doing.'
So, I'll never be employed. I haven't fully accepted this (or I'd stop applying). But one day soon I'll accept this. It'll be a blissful day. I can just imagine that tent in that ravine… dumpster diving, reading all the paperbacks I can find… it's gonna be relaxing, I'll tell you. Monkey butlers and chewy chewy cocoa beans.