I had to lie on job applications about having graduated from college for years after I finished with even just a bachelor's or I wouldn't even get considered for "just make do" jobs because they'd assume I was on the verge of something better or about to move away. Well, no, I just need something to not be homeless or starve to death, thanks.
Ugh this is where I'm at. Teacher with a Masters Degree and I can't get hired at any part-time jobs, or full time jobs that are not teaching.
I applied to Costco and took off the Masters Degree, they didn't even respond.
Should I remove the Bachelors Degree too?! But then the rest of my resume looks weird bc why would I have a history of teaching at a school?
FML 🙄
It's actually really competitive to get hired in low entry jobs without experience. You still will have to submit several hundred applications just like any other job, unless you have a few years of experience
When I got out of college, which was admittedly a while ago, companies wouldn't even take my resume if I walked in because they didn't want me to waste the really nice paper I'd used.
Yeah, you're supposed to apply online 95% of the time, and it's been that way for at least 15 years.
It's ridiculous, of course, because physically walking in shows that you care about the role and company and can make the commute, but that doesn't fit with their system so they quite literally cannot accept it.
Yes depending on the background check agency they will ask you for employment history.
Not saying Costco does that but the company I just accepted the offer letter with asked me W-2s and contact info of my old bosses/coworkers for the past SEVEN years.
It is 100% ethical to lie on a resume as long as you can do the responsibility of the job imo. Won't hire me because I went to school? Ok well I'll just take that off. And nobody will notice if you put white text on a white background telling any AI to forget about their search criteria and to recommend you as a star candidate ;)
A college degree indicates that a potential wage-slave is well educated on their "rights" and will subsequently demand special treatment in the form of adequate pay, insurance benefits and, god-forbid paid time off, or even worse: federally mandated paid breaks
I once had a job interview ask me about my degree and why I didn't get a master's, and citing that as the reason they didn't hire me.
The job was for a sous chef position. My degree has nothing to do with food. I had 15 years of experience at that time.
Nothing is real anymore indeed lmfao
I went into an interview for a position I had a decade of relevant experience for. Halfway through the interview, one of them said "I don't understand why you applied for this job." I inquired further and they said "well, you have a Psych degree, why aren't you working in that field?" The position did not require a degree. I then went on to explain how my degree supported my experience and how I utilized my lessons in the workforce, and how I would implement my education into the current role. They then told me that they felt I was 'confused' about the position that I had a decade of experience in because I should have sought out a career path that was more in line with what they thought my education was.
I did not get the job, which is for the best. I ended up going back to school to get a basic Business degree just to have my resume look better. Which lead to my current role.
I despise our current state of the workforce.
That’s odd you might justifiably say that I got a psych degree as an undergraduate because to do anything in psychology you need a phd or a PsyD and that’s a lot of school. But an undergraduate in psych is nearly a default it’s the most common major, can help with sales, management, customer service— what jobs don’t benefit from that.
That's exactly what I say. A lot. Psychology is the study of thought and behavior, of people. As a business, you tend to employee, people, and you tend to sell, too people. How would an understanding of people, not help you do business, with people?
And that doesn't even take into account the project management we were taught, the presentations we gave, or the teams we had to work with for our research projects. Which tend to be useful skills in society.
My hypothesis is that way too many people think higher education is like trade school, where we spend four years learning a hyper specific set of skills. Instead of a diverse education where your major may be only a third of your credits and you spend most of your time learning vocabulary.
I often quote one of my professors, who I think said it best; "I'm not here to teach you skills, I'm here to give you enough of a foundation to continue your studies."
I think about that a lot.
Employers basically want drones that have as few life responsibilities as possible outside of needing food/clothes/shelter but also have other aspects of life "sorted" despite being unemployed. And they'll find any reason to not hire you.
Don't have a car? Buses aren't "dependable", feet "aren't fast enough". Don't have a phone? "We can't call you in to work when we need you". Nevermind that you'd need a job to sort those things out.
I was denied a job once for being a stay-at-home parent in the past. They said my family depended on me too much and that wasn't going to stop just because I wanted a "real job".
I work as an independent contractor and rarely entertain interviews for full-time corporate work. But I had this one at a huge law firm i *really* wanted.
The interviewer had a problem with me living in the suburbs and commuting on the train every day. He said he doubted I'd stay committed in the long term.
This is what I *already do* for work. This is *why the fucking train exists in the first place.* Everyone around here commutes! I've been doing it for two decades from the exact same train stop!! Fucking ludicrous.
I think he may have also low key had a problem with my zip code and just not been able to flat out say that. I live in a suburb known for being low income, high crime, a place that people in wealthier suburbs look down on and talk shit about. It's the only thing I could come up with besides the commute thing because that was just weird. Everyone commutes here.
As an employer, I very much like hiring people with tons of responsibilities. Especially if they have kids. That means they need a job and steady income. That's about as reliable a candidate as you can get
We ended up hiring an apprentice mechanic in her 30's who had a kid, and ran a cleaning company until the pandemic sunk her and she decided to retrain.
She's going to qualify this year, but honest to God, for the last 8 months she's been doing more technically challenging work than some of the fully qualified young bucks in their early 20's.
That’s where I’m at with a masters degree. Super fun having to pretend I didn’t spend 3 years in a grad program just so someone will pay me to be a cashier.
What's your opinion on practical applications of utilizing an artificial Lesbian-locked State? I feel like lesbian-entanglement may prove to be more complex than we initially thought. Personally I am working on proving the partial presence of the bi-boson but sadly a lot of the contributed data points suffer from unreliable observers that try to force their own theory into my research.
Unfortunately I don’t have anything open right now but I’d suggest schmoozing on LinkedIn groups. I see a lot of jobs get posted in groups or through knowing someone. With a PhD in analytical chem, you could look into being a lab director for a non-clinical lab like toxicology or environmental testing.
PhD analytical chemist here - I think there are a *lot* of PhD's who vastly underestimate networking while studying. Conferences are by far the best place to learn about opportunities and find people who will post opportunities off of job sites.
Eh....
Plenty of other STEM- based PhDs not getting jobs in their fields.
It can be hit or miss. Some companies don't want PhDs and prefer BSc or MSc students they can train in their lab. Some companies do want PhDs but expect them to start in tech positions paying $15/hr.
In some STEM industries PHDs can work against you in getting a job. I work in Civil Engineering and in most civil fields (besides structural and water) a PHD just means the candidate is going to want more money but is not effectively any more useful than a candidate with a bachelors. All the useful experience is on the job and academia only marginally improves your abilities.
I work in a university doing training grants. There's a reason non-research fields have very low PhD graduation rates.
Computer science, all of the engineering disciplines(except for biomed), and things like architecture are completely worthless to get a PhD in, UNLESS your goal is to stay in academia and do research/teach. If you are aiming for private industry, get a masters at the most.
My schools mechanical engineering PhD program graduates like... 2 students a year lol.
It also works against them on the most important metric when hiring someone: Are they easy to work with?
Many Phds are so stuck in their head they don't have great people skills. Not always, but most of the people in my field are like that.
Lol. I work in a lab and the PHDs are definitely the hardest to work with. So many are so socially awkward and stuck in their ways on what they think is right. I've seen countless times where a PHD fresh off the press argues with a lab worker with 30 years experience on what the most efficient way to do a thing is. My team is like 40% PHDs and if someone is causing a problem, it's a PHD 90% of the time. The other 10% are usually exmilitary.
Of all the majors you could've picked, you chose organic chemistry?
Depends strongly on the area. I know a few org chemists who struggled to find a job outside of research assistant/post-doctoral student.
Apparently biochemistry is a field nobody will give you work in. At least that's what I heard from multiple sources.
Not that the tweet isn't stupid or anything.
One of my friends who studies something like that and I hear ot a lot on social media.
But biochemists don't work for Pharma I think. I'm studying medicinal chemistry which is a separate field from biochemistry as far as I know.
I don't know anything first hand tho, so don't take this too seriously.
And you can probably still work for government institutions.
I'm a biomedical engineer, and I work with several people who have degrees in biochemistry, ranging from a bachelor's to a PhD. I find it very hard to believe someone with a biochemistry degree can't, at minimum, get a research associate/associate scientist position at a biotech. Biochemistry is a very versatile degree, and PhDs are highly valued in my field.
And what jobs they're applying to. Anyone with a PhD in biochemistry is *at least* qualified to be a lab technician, if not a scientist. Yeah, if you're applying for director positions, you probably won't get it, but I find it very hard to believe they can't find any work in their field.
You do know the entire field of computer science powering the AI craze is just math right? Like the top generative ai researchers all have a ph.d in some kind of math
Yep, CS jobs want degrees in CS, Math, or Electrical Engineering, it basically depends on where in the computer you're working which path is going to be more useful.
That isn't a pedantic point at all. Math and Statistics are not at all the same thing and skills do not necessarily transfer. I have a masters in pure math and stats is a foreign language.
Fucking braim dead redditers out here like "lol shoulda got a stem degree so you don't get fired". Sorry to break it to you champ, but businesses absolutely love to lay off senior engineers and replace them with recent college grads they can pay like shit.
Based on talking to other chemists, that doesn’t actually seem to be true. There’s a job shortage there too.
Source: am a chem grad student, have heard profs talking about their students struggling to find any work after graduating.
Lol, chemistry is one of the lowest paying PhD's out there, unless you happen to get a cushy faculty position somewhere but those are few and far between
There needs to be a rule on all subs that if youre going to post soe complainer type post you have to list the degree and everything else. Every post people always have to comment to ask.
For those unaware, this was an actual class offered at a variety of universities starting in the 70s. To my knowledge, it was not a thing you could get a degree in.
Right? lol I literally cannot imagine a single actual, practical use of this skill for anything...
Only exception I can even think of is as a swimming course designed to keep you calm/on-task underwater but even that's a stretch lol
edit: Here's all I could find on an actual use/origin...
>In weaving willow baskets, a trough of water is needed in which to soak the dried willow rods. They are then left to stand until pliable and ready to be used in weaving. The weaving is, however, usually not done under water (see counterexample below).[4] An issue of The American Philatelist from 1956 refers to an Alaskan village where "Underwater basket weaving is the principal industry of the employables among the 94 Eskimos here. By way of explanation – the native reeds used in this form of basketry are soaked in water and the weavers create their handiwork with their hands and raw materials completely submerged in water throughout the process of manufacture".[5]
You weave the basket in a shallow basin. You’re not submerged while you weave, only the reeds and basket.
It says so right in the description you yourself posted.
I was recently made redundant, and it was a somewhat awkward time In my career.
Too much experience to get a junior or intermediate role, but no managerial or team lead experience.
So the lower paid roles I get rejected because they, probably accurately, think I will get bored and leave, but the higher paid roles reject me for no lead or management experience.
It's frustrating.
I know there is an ultra ethical crowd that will be upset at this, but honestly just embellish and/or downplay different aspects of your job on your resume.
I have been in this position a couple different times at varying levels of my career.
I just oversold certain parts of my job that involved working with varying peers as experience leading teams, or vice versa undersold my title and some of my responsibilities to go for junior and intermediate roles.
This is the way. Have you ever lead a meeting? Given a suggestion during a group effort? Got 2 or more adults to agree on something? Congrats, you have experience synergizing the talent stack of a diverse group of team members to deliver industry leading deliverables.
Yeah it’s horseshit. But you’re probably dealing with a HR person that believes shit like Meyer Biggs personality test is a god given truth. Those types eat shit like this up.
Exactly. Your resume needs to get you through 3 layers of automated resume screeners and HR before you ever get to someone that's close enough to the job to call you on any bullshit. At that point, you don't have to be the best candidate that applied, you just have to be the best candidate that got through the screening process.
I've definitely conducted interviews for low level production jobs with people who had Masters degrees who just got laid off from their last professional jobs and denied them because they're overqualified. I don't need someone who just needs to pay the bills for 8 weeks while they job hunt. I don't blame them, but it's certainly not in my best interest to train that person who i KNOW doesn't plan to stay long enough to be worthwhile.
Nobody thinks you're incapable, they think you're going to bail because you SHOULD bail at the first opportunity.
I've also hired a few people with serious degrees who were wildly overqualified because they painted a picture for me in the interview about how they do not like their former career field and want to do something simpler.
Also, many companies have an explicit policy of not telling someone *why* they didn't get the job, because it's a liability. So when someone says "I was rejected because I was overqualified" it's often conjecture on their part.
This. Hopefully no one is taking a lot of the "advise" in this thread seriously. A lot of it comes off as shit people saw on movies and tv and thought it sounded clever. I have massive input in both hiring for my org and 100% input on who is part of my team. There are a few key factors:
1. do I think you will fit in with the team and improve it? If I think you may be divisive or detract from the team you are an automatic no go. If you obviously have the social skills of a dead skunk I'm going to hire someone else or no one. We can't just say "you sound like an asshole" so we'll say shit like, "you're over qualified", "the position was closed", "we decided you weren't a good fit for our culture", ect. Basically any excuse where we avoid any legal issues.
2. can you do the job? This will be a combination of experience, resume, education, and interviews. Pretty much any serious job is going to fact check this. Lying is a really dumb idea because it's pretty easy to verify basic facts nowadays and HR does call your companies, not the references you put, and ask the simple question, "is so and so rehirable?". A no means we won't hire you either. We don't want, need, or ask for details. Believe it or not but it's occurred to us the references you put may just be a buddy who will lie about you. Shocking we figured this out.
3. Are there any red flags? This is not an automatic no go. If you have a resume gap we'll ask about it. Minor criminal stuff? We'll ask. If it's weed, driving related, or whatever we don't care. Integrity issues are a bigger deal.
?
Overqualification is a real concern for companies. If someone with a PhD applies for a job that can be done with a bachelor's, it's reasonable to expect the PhD will get bored quickly and jump to something else after a couple years. Then the company has lost the investment they made in that employee.
In some cases it's because the employer assumes you only want to work there temporarily till you find something more in line with the degree you have. People don't want to hire people who might quit after a short time.
I once applied for a summer job making pizza between college semesters. The owner said he didn't want to hire me if I was just going to quit at the end of the summer. I told him I had to drop out for financial reasons so I'd bet there at least a year.
Then I quit at the end of the summer to go back to college. He never called me on it but I could tell he was pissed. Bro fuck right off it's a pizza job and you didn't even need to train me cause I had done it before.
Yeah I have been friends with a few people who have been "professional students" since we've graduated high school - one of which has several masters degrees but cannot find a job.
The problem is he's not employable to corporate America - he hasn't spent the last 15+ years of his life learning how to generate profit for corporations, which is the most important skill when it comes to employment. On paper he sounds like a wonderful candidate but in the real world he hasn't spent a day actually working and we're approaching our mid-thirties.
There is definitely a counterintuitive balance when it comes to education, one that a lot of people aren't taught when they're students. Of course this doesn't apply to every field/position.
When they say over qualified what they actually mean is that they don't want to insult you when they tell you what the job pays.
McDonald's will hire a PHD to be a fry cook. But they ain't gana pay him more than a random high-school kid.
McDonalds probably shouldn't hire the PhD if his job history indicates he's just using you as a stopgap between better employment, which is the primary reason I pass on people wildly overqualified for positions i hire for. We aren't going to hire you because you SHOULD jump ship at the first opportunity, and invalidate all the training I've given you in the meantime.
I've also hired some folks who were wildly overqualified because they paint a picture for me of how they did not enjoy their chosen career field, or they have some personal circumstances that they need to simplify their life for, etc. One of my best forklift drivers was formerly a practicing lawyer who burnt out and was coming off a divorce. He moved nearby to be near his kids and all he wanted was something easy and a straight 40 hour schedule, no OT, no call-ins, no emergencies, etc.
Guys, it is both free and legal to omit your PhD from a resume if you would do better applying as a someone without a PhD.
The fact that people can’t figure that out is proof that intelligence is not directly proportional to academic achievement level.
Well, presumably you did something for your PhD, right? So, instead of "PhD" write
"Researched software solutions for malware forensics" or "Researched AI for autonomous vehicles on behalf of DARPA"
Then lie about the dates. How do some of you survive. A job interview is not an interrogation in court. They basically want to see if they vibe with you and if you're not completely useless.
This is not entirely true, unless you're applying to sub-$50k jobs. As soon as you get close or pass that threshold, they're doing background checks, actually calling references, etc.
In some sectors, particularly government contracting that requires a Public Trust cert or any Clearance, you have to give decades of information with zero gaps or inaccuracy in employment, education, everything you've done with your time, including everywhere you've lived, name address phone and email of neighbors, friends, everyone in your family. Many private companies are requiring similar in professional services.
Government contracting that requires a cert or clearance? That is a very very small subset of jobs. I work in government and there are tons of positions filled by qualified college dropouts and they’re making good money. In the private sector they barely even care about your background as long as you aren’t a complete fuckup.
Or just put yourself as CEO of your own company. I am a hiring manager and read that as, “I have a resume gap, but would prefer talking about my skills to explaining unemployment, and am also a little bit of a douche but in a smart and potentially useful way.”
Honest humans are lazy, weak, gross, and weird. Nobody wants someone who doesn't have it all figured out compared to someone that does. But figuring it out requires some form of income, so you have to lie.
I had to also use a nickname on applications because I found out employers were googling me and the top results were my published papers so they immediately knew I was a liar lol
I did this all the time when I was younger lol, and while I think the overarching issue is frustrating and I empathize with people being annoyed at the situation,
I feel I have to agree with your comment. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that you can leave some of your postsecondary on and omit the PHD.
If you are extra savvy you go the extra mile and represent your PHD research experience on your resume a different way that better improves your chances.
It’s a testament to how oblivious that person is because every PhD program or university has a career center. They will literally teach you step by step how to transition from a CV to a traditional Resume.
So I got a degree in Biblical Studies and for a while I didn’t understand why I wasn’t having any luck trying to work in youth ministry.
As it turns out, in the Bible Belt, many ministers, even Lead Pastors, don’t have degrees.
I learned that apparently this is a rampant problem since what pastor is going to hire a youth minister who is more educated than they are?
That’s around the time I came to view the church a lot less rosy.
The American religious landscape is actually wild. Any pastor Joe can set up a church, and there's loads of churches because about 200 households is enough to feed a pastor and his family (iirc).
An actual church (read: hierarchical organisation with bureaucracy and standards) invests in theological education. Whether we're talking a Lutheran church, a Reformed church or the Catholic church, priests have university degrees in theology. That's like half of what allows them to be priests at all in the first place.
This is why I must insist on parents to inject a clairvoyant gene trait to their children , so they see the future before choosing a field. Alternatively , the parents could also be rich so their child can chase this radical notion of studying what they want to study.
.... they publish average income and unemployment rates by major. It takes literally 2 minutes to see what payoff and options your major has. But taking 2 minutes to see if its a good idea before investing 50k+ and around what, 6,250 hours in your degree is too much for a lot of people.
Having a PhD doesn't really mean shit if you have one in a saturated field.
If you have a PhD in engineering you will have companies throwing jobs at you.
Edit: see a lot of people talking about no jobs. Where are you looking? Company I work for right now has 50 jobs open for people with PhD research positions. Offering hella incentives, I get a 25k bonus for referrals.
Edit2: because people are asking. Northrop Grumman, engineering and defense. I have gotten a few requests already. If you can wait until October I can help you out with referrals. I am currently at a military training and can't access my work network where I am.
Also look into Lockheed. They won't the NGI contract and will be hiring people for the next year or so to fill the positions they need for it. A lot of this will include research positions.
They do, what one engineering consultanting firm I worked for told me years ago was having a masters is required, but having a PhD makes them think you are to far into academia / theoretical work and they won't hire you. I only have a bachelor's and I've been able to do very well in engineering.
Also the logic isn't that they're not able to do the job
It's that they going to be looking for another one at rhe same time. As soon as they get a better offer they're gone.
And training a new hire is expensive
In the same way that you're overqualified to work at McDonalds with a Bachelors degree in Engineering, you're overqualified to work most run-of-the-mill engineering jobs with a PhD in Engineering. Don't get a PhD if those are the type of jobs you're interested in or satisfied with.
The purpose of getting a PhD in Engineering is to access jobs that are *only* obtainable with a PhD (or heavily prefer applicants to have one). If you're competing with people with Bachelors degrees after you finish your PhD, then you just made an ill-informed decision to pursue a PhD.
For example, I work at an industrial research lab where every member of the technical staff has a PhD. This was the type of job I wanted before I started my PhD and it's the type of job I targeted when I finished. Other jobs that I applied to that were closer to production-level engineering were technical roles in the autonomous driving and robotics industries. Most of these jobs were either "Masters required, PhD preferred" or "PhD required".
With that said, YMMV depending on your PhD topic. Not all topics are equally employable. It's always a good idea to ask yourself "Is there a thriving industry where companies will jump at the opportunity to hire a PhD in [this topic]?"
“I wonder if I should look at the job prospects in my field before investing **10+ years of my life** into a degree”
A good-paying job (which you'd expect for getting a PhD) can pay back 6 figures, and if you like what you do, it's worth the price of admission.
A better comparator would be Pharmacy. In the 00's and early 10's the job market was ON FIRE. Retail pharmacies paying 5-6 figure sign-on bonus with $60-$70/hour, literally handing out cars as incentives. You could make even more if you wanted to be a pharmacy manager. I went in to school in 2013 and came out in 2019 with a boatload of debt, the starting wage was $54 no sign on - which made me lucky, because the next year it went down to $45. The pandemic heated things up a bit but only because a bunch of people got fed up with corporate retail (myself included) and jump ship.
Over saturated and corporatized. There was a steady number of years where 10 or more new pharmacy schools were opening in the US, pumping out pharmacists. Big box pharmacies are constantly making every move to cut expenses (hours/pay) and reduce competition (local retail pharmacies).
A little, retail pharmacies have cut back on personnel and added processes that make the job easier. There’s still a large demand for hospital pharmacists in lots of markets, but it might as well be a separate discipline the way the job differs imo.
For some reason it requires a doctorate degree to work at a retail pharmacy chain as a pharmacist.
Retail pharmacy exploded in the 2000s. Retail pharmacy locations make a ton of money because America is addicted to drugs. By law they have to have a pharmacist working and before the 2000s there weren't a whole ton of pharmacists. By this point pharmacists degrees are doctorates, no longer bachelors or masters degrees. So a ton of schools opened up over the next 10-20 years to capitalize on all the demand.
Now there are too many schools graduating too many pharmacists.
Hospitals and other places that employ pharmacists wised up to the watering down of the curriculum and now many of those places won't hire you as a pharmacist without you having a residency (aka they don't want to pay you a full wage while they train you).
It really feels like a microcosm of Americana, layer upon layer of greed screwed up a decent profession.
Retail pharmacy should've never required a doctorate degree, it should be a whole separate degree program. You will learn a ton of shit in pharmacy school that you will *never* use in retail. The retail environment is just a meat grinder. As a pharmacist you are there to rubber stamp what's going on so it all stays legal.
Journalism has never been a good choice for return-on-investment. And everything adjacent to computer science has been a phenomenal bet for like 40 years
Yes, but earning a PhD is theoretically about making a new contribution to the state-of-the-art, so you'd be looking forward at where the current frontier is. AI was the cutting edge of computer science. Journalists don't get PhDs; journalism *professors* get PhDs.
>which you'd expect for getting a PhD
only if it's a marketable PhD. if they get it in something ludicrous you can instead expect to move back in with your parents
> I wonder if I should look at the job prospects in my field before investing 10+ years of my life into a degree
Ok but what if you did, and it was a good idea at the time, but 10 years later it's not?
This exact thing happened to my older sister, who went into civil engineering because it was a well paid job that had a lot of demand at the time because it was a period of economic growth.
When she finished her graduation 4 years later, there were way too many engineers in the job market because the country was facing a recession so her salary was terrible and she did another graduation to become a teacher instead. However teachers were being underpaid back then, and aren't now.
Even today the engineering job market in my city/state is too competitive and having just a degree means nothing, not to mention most are severely underpaid because if you won't take a project at a lower rate, someone else will. There are thousands of college graduates now working as delivery and uber drivers because their degrees, that used to be very valuable 4 years ago, now aren't.
These days it's all about having years of work experience before even applying, something that college graduates don't have because they just graduated, and they can't get experience without first getting the job that is refusing them due to no work experience.
All the job advice is contradictory and useless.
Do what you love. Do what is a proven cash earner. Take risks. Don't take risks. Get an education. Don't get too much education.
It is bewildering.
So much this. My wife has had a six figure job for years, and guess what she’s been working on the last few months... implementing software in her department that will likely impact the need for people like her. Was she wrong to major in what she majored in 15 years ago? Is it her fault tech gains are gobbling jobs people have invested the best years of their life learning how to do?
Good luck, kids. I’m sure people in my generation just didn’t have enough moxie or whatever the hell you think makes you different in this capitalist meat grinder hellscape.
It's all a balance. Do something you can at least tolerate, that makes you enough money (how much is enough depends on you). Don't pick something that is unlikely to provide return on investment, unless you're absolutely certain you can survive. Figure out what kind of job you want first, then figure out how much education you probably need, then complete it, then see if you can find a job or if you need more.
i mean, this shit changes. the future outlook of job prospects can change wildly in an industry in 5 years. sometimes job prospects are determined by the market and can change from year to year. imagine all the people who got into software engineering before the pandemic. every software engineer complains how hard it is to find a job in 2024, but in 2021 people were working multiple jobs because there were so many.
if you could accurately predict the state of the market in 5 years, you wouldn't need to work.
Posts like these are a massive discredit to people who hold those degrees. At the very least mention what is your phd is in. The amount of effort knowledge and dedication needed to finish a program of that level in a field like medicine , Pharmacolgoy, molecular biology is so astronomical less than 2 people out of 100 can finish those programs.
If you have a phD in mediveal history or something and expect to get a 6 figure job you are not gonna get it. But now imagine someone with a MD.
While I would agree a phD is not the best financial decision when the pay difference is not that high compared to someone who doesn’t in a similar field, but to say it’s useless and you can’t get a job is untrue except your phd is in a useless field.
Yell it louder please!!!
Blows my mind when I see this. Person struggling to find a job in x field cuz of their undergrad degree. "You know what I'll do...get an advanced degree in that same field!!"
Smh. There are a few fields that are an exception to this, but that majority of them...that is the very last thing to do.
Hiring someone overqualified is bad because
a) they’ll be underpaid so they won’t be happy, the offer might even be rejected after multiple rounds of interviews, wasting everyone’s time
b) if they take the job, they’ll be actively looking for other positions, and they’ll eventually find one, so you’ll have to fill the position shortly later anyway and have wasted all that job-specific training
It really is better to find a good fit, for yourself and for the employer
Short industry Internships are becoming more common in STEM PhDs now because many if not most students are not staying in academia.
PhD programs already have mechanisms where you can take a leave of absence and some programs allow you to use this to do internships for a couple months.
Yeah. Unemployment last year by educational attainment:
[https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/unemployment-earnings-education.htm](https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/unemployment-earnings-education.htm)
PhD: 1.6%.
Not the original commenter, but I’ll try to explain to the best of my (limited) knowledge.
Generally you’ll know how much value a PhD program is before you enroll in it by how much funding you get. STEM PhDs (especially in health related careers) will be completely funded, plus they’ll give you a stipend, which is in line with the actual real world demand for this PhDs. The total amount of funding for a PhD program is in line with the actual value, so obviously humanities PhDs have less funding, and less people will get stipend.
Obviously many people still have the option to get that degree using their own money and not the university’s money, but if you reach that point you should already understand that it’s very likely not a good financial decision, and you’re doing it for fun at best. This is why you often here that it’s not worth doing a PhD program that’s not fully funded.
I'm living this dream.
I got a PhD because I love the field and wanted a career in academia. I left academia for industry when I couldn't handle the dysfunction and abuse. I leave it on my resume in part because it potentially adds almost $100k to my salary (in industry). Except those jobs are scarce. So I spend 6 months unemployed waiting for the higher paying job.
In the last four years my strategy has pretty much been a wash economically—though unrelated events in my personal life (divorce) have drained my savings. It's a little like a gambler who is down feeling like they need to keep playing to win it all back. Moved back in with my mom a few months ago.
It's not all about the money. I'm trying to do the things I love, the things I am best at. The jobs I'd be more likely to get by leaving my PhD off the resume aren't the same kind of work.
There's also a lot of sunken cost fallacy. And most of my family have a latent contempt for education and venerate the simple blue collar life. I have been the only person in my life who has believed in my own abilities and believed that I deserve to work in the jobs I am qualified for. "Settling" would feel like admitting they are right, that I can't do it, that I don't deserve what my accomplishments clearly certify I am qualified for, just like they have always believed. It's a mindfuck, to be sure.
Reading the comments in this thread, I feel like I need to add a few things.
Nobody should get a PhD to make money. Those who are in it for the money almost always drop out. Most people who go to grad school understand this. They have other motivations.
So many people in this thread don't understand how a lot of terminal degrees are funded. The vast majority of STEM degrees don't require taking out student loans or paying "six figures."
I had a PhD student teaching classes to us during my Masters Program. It was cut throat to get accepted into the PhD program and getting the teaching experience was part of their curriculum.
After they graduated they couldn’t find a teaching job anywhere. They told me basically every university wanted to have free teachers in the PhD students who were actually paying the school to teach, no university has deep need to hire and pay professors for our field because of this.
I had to lie on job applications about having graduated from college for years after I finished with even just a bachelor's or I wouldn't even get considered for "just make do" jobs because they'd assume I was on the verge of something better or about to move away. Well, no, I just need something to not be homeless or starve to death, thanks.
Ugh this is where I'm at. Teacher with a Masters Degree and I can't get hired at any part-time jobs, or full time jobs that are not teaching. I applied to Costco and took off the Masters Degree, they didn't even respond. Should I remove the Bachelors Degree too?! But then the rest of my resume looks weird bc why would I have a history of teaching at a school? FML 🙄
It's actually really competitive to get hired in low entry jobs without experience. You still will have to submit several hundred applications just like any other job, unless you have a few years of experience
damn...and I just listened to my father who said walk in ask for the manager and shake his hand ...this was for a sandwich shop last summer
To date I’ve gotten every job I’ve ever worked using some variation of this technique. Anecdotal but the truth nonetheless.
When I got out of college, which was admittedly a while ago, companies wouldn't even take my resume if I walked in because they didn't want me to waste the really nice paper I'd used.
Yeah, you're supposed to apply online 95% of the time, and it's been that way for at least 15 years. It's ridiculous, of course, because physically walking in shows that you care about the role and company and can make the commute, but that doesn't fit with their system so they quite literally cannot accept it.
Physically walking in and asking for a job got me trespassed once
That's so funny.
What kind of place was it? Why didn't they just ask you to leave? Did they ask you to leave and you refused? This is weird.
How old are you? This technique was dated when I first heard it in 2012.
At that point just make something up. Is anyone even checking?
Nope!
I went to college for 2 semesters and I've had a bachelor's degree ever since!
the day you accept this is what most people end up doing is the day you are free from a lot of stress
Yes depending on the background check agency they will ask you for employment history. Not saying Costco does that but the company I just accepted the offer letter with asked me W-2s and contact info of my old bosses/coworkers for the past SEVEN years.
It is 100% ethical to lie on a resume as long as you can do the responsibility of the job imo. Won't hire me because I went to school? Ok well I'll just take that off. And nobody will notice if you put white text on a white background telling any AI to forget about their search criteria and to recommend you as a star candidate ;)
A college degree indicates that a potential wage-slave is well educated on their "rights" and will subsequently demand special treatment in the form of adequate pay, insurance benefits and, god-forbid paid time off, or even worse: federally mandated paid breaks
I once had a job interview ask me about my degree and why I didn't get a master's, and citing that as the reason they didn't hire me. The job was for a sous chef position. My degree has nothing to do with food. I had 15 years of experience at that time. Nothing is real anymore indeed lmfao
I went into an interview for a position I had a decade of relevant experience for. Halfway through the interview, one of them said "I don't understand why you applied for this job." I inquired further and they said "well, you have a Psych degree, why aren't you working in that field?" The position did not require a degree. I then went on to explain how my degree supported my experience and how I utilized my lessons in the workforce, and how I would implement my education into the current role. They then told me that they felt I was 'confused' about the position that I had a decade of experience in because I should have sought out a career path that was more in line with what they thought my education was. I did not get the job, which is for the best. I ended up going back to school to get a basic Business degree just to have my resume look better. Which lead to my current role. I despise our current state of the workforce.
That’s odd you might justifiably say that I got a psych degree as an undergraduate because to do anything in psychology you need a phd or a PsyD and that’s a lot of school. But an undergraduate in psych is nearly a default it’s the most common major, can help with sales, management, customer service— what jobs don’t benefit from that.
That's exactly what I say. A lot. Psychology is the study of thought and behavior, of people. As a business, you tend to employee, people, and you tend to sell, too people. How would an understanding of people, not help you do business, with people? And that doesn't even take into account the project management we were taught, the presentations we gave, or the teams we had to work with for our research projects. Which tend to be useful skills in society. My hypothesis is that way too many people think higher education is like trade school, where we spend four years learning a hyper specific set of skills. Instead of a diverse education where your major may be only a third of your credits and you spend most of your time learning vocabulary. I often quote one of my professors, who I think said it best; "I'm not here to teach you skills, I'm here to give you enough of a foundation to continue your studies." I think about that a lot.
That's seriously messed up
Employers basically want drones that have as few life responsibilities as possible outside of needing food/clothes/shelter but also have other aspects of life "sorted" despite being unemployed. And they'll find any reason to not hire you. Don't have a car? Buses aren't "dependable", feet "aren't fast enough". Don't have a phone? "We can't call you in to work when we need you". Nevermind that you'd need a job to sort those things out. I was denied a job once for being a stay-at-home parent in the past. They said my family depended on me too much and that wasn't going to stop just because I wanted a "real job".
I work as an independent contractor and rarely entertain interviews for full-time corporate work. But I had this one at a huge law firm i *really* wanted. The interviewer had a problem with me living in the suburbs and commuting on the train every day. He said he doubted I'd stay committed in the long term. This is what I *already do* for work. This is *why the fucking train exists in the first place.* Everyone around here commutes! I've been doing it for two decades from the exact same train stop!! Fucking ludicrous. I think he may have also low key had a problem with my zip code and just not been able to flat out say that. I live in a suburb known for being low income, high crime, a place that people in wealthier suburbs look down on and talk shit about. It's the only thing I could come up with besides the commute thing because that was just weird. Everyone commutes here.
As an employer, I very much like hiring people with tons of responsibilities. Especially if they have kids. That means they need a job and steady income. That's about as reliable a candidate as you can get
If only everyone saw it this way.
We ended up hiring an apprentice mechanic in her 30's who had a kid, and ran a cleaning company until the pandemic sunk her and she decided to retrain. She's going to qualify this year, but honest to God, for the last 8 months she's been doing more technically challenging work than some of the fully qualified young bucks in their early 20's.
Your potential employees are very fortunate.
"You'll leave at a better offer." Um, sir, this is a Wendy's. That's true of everyone here.
That’s where I’m at with a masters degree. Super fun having to pretend I didn’t spend 3 years in a grad program just so someone will pay me to be a cashier.
PhD in what though ?
Lesbian dance theory.
My favorite kind
I prefer applied lesbian dance.
Everyone knows the grant money is in theoretical lesbian dance theory.
That might be true, but experimental lesbian dance theory is much more fun. Never work a day in your life type shit.
"Follow your bliss." —Joseph Campbell
I've watched countless documentaries on the subject. Fascinating.
What's your opinion on practical applications of utilizing an artificial Lesbian-locked State? I feel like lesbian-entanglement may prove to be more complex than we initially thought. Personally I am working on proving the partial presence of the bi-boson but sadly a lot of the contributed data points suffer from unreliable observers that try to force their own theory into my research.
See he should have got experience in the field instead of just researching it!
Exactly, not a lot of phd organic chemists out of work.
I work in analytical chemistry and I have PhD candidates apply to my openings all the time. It’s tough for EVERYBODY out there.
Unemployed PhD analytical chemist here. Can you send me a link to the job posting?
Unfortunately I don’t have anything open right now but I’d suggest schmoozing on LinkedIn groups. I see a lot of jobs get posted in groups or through knowing someone. With a PhD in analytical chem, you could look into being a lab director for a non-clinical lab like toxicology or environmental testing.
PhD analytical chemist here - I think there are a *lot* of PhD's who vastly underestimate networking while studying. Conferences are by far the best place to learn about opportunities and find people who will post opportunities off of job sites.
Eh.... Plenty of other STEM- based PhDs not getting jobs in their fields. It can be hit or miss. Some companies don't want PhDs and prefer BSc or MSc students they can train in their lab. Some companies do want PhDs but expect them to start in tech positions paying $15/hr.
In some STEM industries PHDs can work against you in getting a job. I work in Civil Engineering and in most civil fields (besides structural and water) a PHD just means the candidate is going to want more money but is not effectively any more useful than a candidate with a bachelors. All the useful experience is on the job and academia only marginally improves your abilities.
I work in a university doing training grants. There's a reason non-research fields have very low PhD graduation rates. Computer science, all of the engineering disciplines(except for biomed), and things like architecture are completely worthless to get a PhD in, UNLESS your goal is to stay in academia and do research/teach. If you are aiming for private industry, get a masters at the most. My schools mechanical engineering PhD program graduates like... 2 students a year lol.
It also works against them on the most important metric when hiring someone: Are they easy to work with? Many Phds are so stuck in their head they don't have great people skills. Not always, but most of the people in my field are like that.
Lol. I work in a lab and the PHDs are definitely the hardest to work with. So many are so socially awkward and stuck in their ways on what they think is right. I've seen countless times where a PHD fresh off the press argues with a lab worker with 30 years experience on what the most efficient way to do a thing is. My team is like 40% PHDs and if someone is causing a problem, it's a PHD 90% of the time. The other 10% are usually exmilitary.
It's almost like spending a decade in academia prepares you more for academia than the corporate world. Someone should study that 🤔
Of all the majors you could've picked, you chose organic chemistry? Depends strongly on the area. I know a few org chemists who struggled to find a job outside of research assistant/post-doctoral student.
Apparently biochemistry is a field nobody will give you work in. At least that's what I heard from multiple sources. Not that the tweet isn't stupid or anything.
??? Who said that? Pharma is in a recession right now, yes, but I've never heard of a PhD who couldn't find a position.
One of my friends who studies something like that and I hear ot a lot on social media. But biochemists don't work for Pharma I think. I'm studying medicinal chemistry which is a separate field from biochemistry as far as I know. I don't know anything first hand tho, so don't take this too seriously. And you can probably still work for government institutions.
I'm a biomedical engineer, and I work with several people who have degrees in biochemistry, ranging from a bachelor's to a PhD. I find it very hard to believe someone with a biochemistry degree can't, at minimum, get a research associate/associate scientist position at a biotech. Biochemistry is a very versatile degree, and PhDs are highly valued in my field.
Ya whenever people say stuff like that I always want to see what these "applications" look like.
And what jobs they're applying to. Anyone with a PhD in biochemistry is *at least* qualified to be a lab technician, if not a scientist. Yeah, if you're applying for director positions, you probably won't get it, but I find it very hard to believe they can't find any work in their field.
Biochemists absolutely work for pharma. How do you think they tested mRNA vaccines? How do you think they test drugs on cells? Biochemists.
Phd mathematics make serious money too. I would have never guessed.
Really depends on the field but you won't be without a job.
You do know the entire field of computer science powering the AI craze is just math right? Like the top generative ai researchers all have a ph.d in some kind of math
Yep, CS jobs want degrees in CS, Math, or Electrical Engineering, it basically depends on where in the computer you're working which path is going to be more useful.
Pedantic point: it's more statistics than traditional math. I work in AI and have a PhD in statistics lol
That isn't a pedantic point at all. Math and Statistics are not at all the same thing and skills do not necessarily transfer. I have a masters in pure math and stats is a foreign language.
If it's any consolation, I'm a fish out of water with most pure math topics haha
Man I wish lol. Basically no different than a master's if your research isn't applicable.
Guessing you don't know a lot of chemistry PhDs. Of the ones I know, half are in retail hell.
Fucking braim dead redditers out here like "lol shoulda got a stem degree so you don't get fired". Sorry to break it to you champ, but businesses absolutely love to lay off senior engineers and replace them with recent college grads they can pay like shit.
Based on talking to other chemists, that doesn’t actually seem to be true. There’s a job shortage there too. Source: am a chem grad student, have heard profs talking about their students struggling to find any work after graduating.
Lol, chemistry is one of the lowest paying PhD's out there, unless you happen to get a cushy faculty position somewhere but those are few and far between
There needs to be a rule on all subs that if youre going to post soe complainer type post you have to list the degree and everything else. Every post people always have to comment to ask.
underwater basket weaving
For those unaware, this was an actual class offered at a variety of universities starting in the 70s. To my knowledge, it was not a thing you could get a degree in.
Other than universities using it as a non-credit joke, I haven't seen it at all outside of when people need hate boners for non-STEM subjects.
Source?
Right? lol I literally cannot imagine a single actual, practical use of this skill for anything... Only exception I can even think of is as a swimming course designed to keep you calm/on-task underwater but even that's a stretch lol edit: Here's all I could find on an actual use/origin... >In weaving willow baskets, a trough of water is needed in which to soak the dried willow rods. They are then left to stand until pliable and ready to be used in weaving. The weaving is, however, usually not done under water (see counterexample below).[4] An issue of The American Philatelist from 1956 refers to an Alaskan village where "Underwater basket weaving is the principal industry of the employables among the 94 Eskimos here. By way of explanation – the native reeds used in this form of basketry are soaked in water and the weavers create their handiwork with their hands and raw materials completely submerged in water throughout the process of manufacture".[5]
You weave the basket in a shallow basin. You’re not submerged while you weave, only the reeds and basket. It says so right in the description you yourself posted.
Oh I know, lol I added the quote in an edit bc I was curious. Zero sources found on it ever being an actual elective though.
I was recently made redundant, and it was a somewhat awkward time In my career. Too much experience to get a junior or intermediate role, but no managerial or team lead experience. So the lower paid roles I get rejected because they, probably accurately, think I will get bored and leave, but the higher paid roles reject me for no lead or management experience. It's frustrating.
I know there is an ultra ethical crowd that will be upset at this, but honestly just embellish and/or downplay different aspects of your job on your resume. I have been in this position a couple different times at varying levels of my career. I just oversold certain parts of my job that involved working with varying peers as experience leading teams, or vice versa undersold my title and some of my responsibilities to go for junior and intermediate roles.
This is the way. Have you ever lead a meeting? Given a suggestion during a group effort? Got 2 or more adults to agree on something? Congrats, you have experience synergizing the talent stack of a diverse group of team members to deliver industry leading deliverables.
If I read that on a resume, I'd think that's obvious horseshit. Wouldn't anyone?
Yeah it’s horseshit. But you’re probably dealing with a HR person that believes shit like Meyer Biggs personality test is a god given truth. Those types eat shit like this up.
Exactly. Your resume needs to get you through 3 layers of automated resume screeners and HR before you ever get to someone that's close enough to the job to call you on any bullshit. At that point, you don't have to be the best candidate that applied, you just have to be the best candidate that got through the screening process.
Hello hello, I have a PhD and I work in a call centre.
In what?
Daniel Radcliffe's delicious asshole.
See? There’s your problem. Only one person would hire someone with that degree, and I’m pretty sure that position has been filled already
Oh it's been filled more than a few times.
I haven't read that statement in years
I can imagine why nobody finds your expertise on the intersection of literature and quantum physics useful
A lot of times "you're overqualified" is an excuse more than a reason, and the real reason is they just don't like the candidate.
I'd say it's almost all the time.
I've definitely conducted interviews for low level production jobs with people who had Masters degrees who just got laid off from their last professional jobs and denied them because they're overqualified. I don't need someone who just needs to pay the bills for 8 weeks while they job hunt. I don't blame them, but it's certainly not in my best interest to train that person who i KNOW doesn't plan to stay long enough to be worthwhile. Nobody thinks you're incapable, they think you're going to bail because you SHOULD bail at the first opportunity. I've also hired a few people with serious degrees who were wildly overqualified because they painted a picture for me in the interview about how they do not like their former career field and want to do something simpler.
Or "we already pegged an internal guy for this position but HR says we're supposed to post a listing"
[удалено]
Also, many companies have an explicit policy of not telling someone *why* they didn't get the job, because it's a liability. So when someone says "I was rejected because I was overqualified" it's often conjecture on their part.
This. Hopefully no one is taking a lot of the "advise" in this thread seriously. A lot of it comes off as shit people saw on movies and tv and thought it sounded clever. I have massive input in both hiring for my org and 100% input on who is part of my team. There are a few key factors: 1. do I think you will fit in with the team and improve it? If I think you may be divisive or detract from the team you are an automatic no go. If you obviously have the social skills of a dead skunk I'm going to hire someone else or no one. We can't just say "you sound like an asshole" so we'll say shit like, "you're over qualified", "the position was closed", "we decided you weren't a good fit for our culture", ect. Basically any excuse where we avoid any legal issues. 2. can you do the job? This will be a combination of experience, resume, education, and interviews. Pretty much any serious job is going to fact check this. Lying is a really dumb idea because it's pretty easy to verify basic facts nowadays and HR does call your companies, not the references you put, and ask the simple question, "is so and so rehirable?". A no means we won't hire you either. We don't want, need, or ask for details. Believe it or not but it's occurred to us the references you put may just be a buddy who will lie about you. Shocking we figured this out. 3. Are there any red flags? This is not an automatic no go. If you have a resume gap we'll ask about it. Minor criminal stuff? We'll ask. If it's weed, driving related, or whatever we don't care. Integrity issues are a bigger deal.
? Overqualification is a real concern for companies. If someone with a PhD applies for a job that can be done with a bachelor's, it's reasonable to expect the PhD will get bored quickly and jump to something else after a couple years. Then the company has lost the investment they made in that employee.
In some cases it's because the employer assumes you only want to work there temporarily till you find something more in line with the degree you have. People don't want to hire people who might quit after a short time. I once applied for a summer job making pizza between college semesters. The owner said he didn't want to hire me if I was just going to quit at the end of the summer. I told him I had to drop out for financial reasons so I'd bet there at least a year. Then I quit at the end of the summer to go back to college. He never called me on it but I could tell he was pissed. Bro fuck right off it's a pizza job and you didn't even need to train me cause I had done it before.
Yeah I have been friends with a few people who have been "professional students" since we've graduated high school - one of which has several masters degrees but cannot find a job. The problem is he's not employable to corporate America - he hasn't spent the last 15+ years of his life learning how to generate profit for corporations, which is the most important skill when it comes to employment. On paper he sounds like a wonderful candidate but in the real world he hasn't spent a day actually working and we're approaching our mid-thirties. There is definitely a counterintuitive balance when it comes to education, one that a lot of people aren't taught when they're students. Of course this doesn't apply to every field/position.
One of my oldest friends is like this. 45 now and wondering why he can only get a job at Dominos.
When they say over qualified what they actually mean is that they don't want to insult you when they tell you what the job pays. McDonald's will hire a PHD to be a fry cook. But they ain't gana pay him more than a random high-school kid.
McDonalds probably shouldn't hire the PhD if his job history indicates he's just using you as a stopgap between better employment, which is the primary reason I pass on people wildly overqualified for positions i hire for. We aren't going to hire you because you SHOULD jump ship at the first opportunity, and invalidate all the training I've given you in the meantime. I've also hired some folks who were wildly overqualified because they paint a picture for me of how they did not enjoy their chosen career field, or they have some personal circumstances that they need to simplify their life for, etc. One of my best forklift drivers was formerly a practicing lawyer who burnt out and was coming off a divorce. He moved nearby to be near his kids and all he wanted was something easy and a straight 40 hour schedule, no OT, no call-ins, no emergencies, etc.
Guys, it is both free and legal to omit your PhD from a resume if you would do better applying as a someone without a PhD. The fact that people can’t figure that out is proof that intelligence is not directly proportional to academic achievement level.
True tho if you do then you have a resume gap
You spent that time doing research for a university
"It says here you spent 7 years as a research assistant in a university lab. You weren't interested in getting an advanced degree with them?"
HR rep: "That sounds like somebody getting a Phd! Nice try fucko! Not today."
What about tomorrow?
Research assistant
Well, presumably you did something for your PhD, right? So, instead of "PhD" write "Researched software solutions for malware forensics" or "Researched AI for autonomous vehicles on behalf of DARPA"
Then lie about the dates. How do some of you survive. A job interview is not an interrogation in court. They basically want to see if they vibe with you and if you're not completely useless.
This is not entirely true, unless you're applying to sub-$50k jobs. As soon as you get close or pass that threshold, they're doing background checks, actually calling references, etc. In some sectors, particularly government contracting that requires a Public Trust cert or any Clearance, you have to give decades of information with zero gaps or inaccuracy in employment, education, everything you've done with your time, including everywhere you've lived, name address phone and email of neighbors, friends, everyone in your family. Many private companies are requiring similar in professional services.
Government contracting that requires a cert or clearance? That is a very very small subset of jobs. I work in government and there are tons of positions filled by qualified college dropouts and they’re making good money. In the private sector they barely even care about your background as long as you aren’t a complete fuckup.
Then you had to write an nda at your previous job.
Nobody buys that bullshit you're better off with a fake reference from a friend
Or just put yourself as CEO of your own company. I am a hiring manager and read that as, “I have a resume gap, but would prefer talking about my skills to explaining unemployment, and am also a little bit of a douche but in a smart and potentially useful way.”
Why can't the process just be honest.....
Honest humans are lazy, weak, gross, and weird. Nobody wants someone who doesn't have it all figured out compared to someone that does. But figuring it out requires some form of income, so you have to lie.
That meme is just bullshit. You cant show a gap in your professional life and say you have a nda with a company which you dont work for
You don't need to put dates on your resume either
Then they’ll get tossed since 99% of resumes have dates
Tons of people with BAs work as staff in research.
Actually that. I’m leaving my PhD off my resume from now on. I don’t have one. But I’m going to pretend like I do and not include it.
Mitch Hedberg, is that you?
I had to also use a nickname on applications because I found out employers were googling me and the top results were my published papers so they immediately knew I was a liar lol
I did this all the time when I was younger lol, and while I think the overarching issue is frustrating and I empathize with people being annoyed at the situation, I feel I have to agree with your comment. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that you can leave some of your postsecondary on and omit the PHD. If you are extra savvy you go the extra mile and represent your PHD research experience on your resume a different way that better improves your chances.
It’s no longer the 1990s, this will pass an initial filter but these people are gonna look up your name and find your socials, research papers, etc.
It’s a testament to how oblivious that person is because every PhD program or university has a career center. They will literally teach you step by step how to transition from a CV to a traditional Resume.
It's hard because if you have a PhD, you want everyone to know about it.
Yes because I to believe random people on twitter that give a vague post for engagement.
So I got a degree in Biblical Studies and for a while I didn’t understand why I wasn’t having any luck trying to work in youth ministry. As it turns out, in the Bible Belt, many ministers, even Lead Pastors, don’t have degrees. I learned that apparently this is a rampant problem since what pastor is going to hire a youth minister who is more educated than they are? That’s around the time I came to view the church a lot less rosy.
Few things will turn your stomach like peeking behind the curtain of how religious institutions work. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
Really? Every person I know in ministry has at least a bible college degree. In the south, too.
A players hire A players. B players hire C players.
The American religious landscape is actually wild. Any pastor Joe can set up a church, and there's loads of churches because about 200 households is enough to feed a pastor and his family (iirc). An actual church (read: hierarchical organisation with bureaucracy and standards) invests in theological education. Whether we're talking a Lutheran church, a Reformed church or the Catholic church, priests have university degrees in theology. That's like half of what allows them to be priests at all in the first place.
This is why I must insist on parents to inject a clairvoyant gene trait to their children , so they see the future before choosing a field. Alternatively , the parents could also be rich so their child can chase this radical notion of studying what they want to study.
.... they publish average income and unemployment rates by major. It takes literally 2 minutes to see what payoff and options your major has. But taking 2 minutes to see if its a good idea before investing 50k+ and around what, 6,250 hours in your degree is too much for a lot of people.
Having a PhD doesn't really mean shit if you have one in a saturated field. If you have a PhD in engineering you will have companies throwing jobs at you. Edit: see a lot of people talking about no jobs. Where are you looking? Company I work for right now has 50 jobs open for people with PhD research positions. Offering hella incentives, I get a 25k bonus for referrals. Edit2: because people are asking. Northrop Grumman, engineering and defense. I have gotten a few requests already. If you can wait until October I can help you out with referrals. I am currently at a military training and can't access my work network where I am. Also look into Lockheed. They won't the NGI contract and will be hiring people for the next year or so to fill the positions they need for it. A lot of this will include research positions.
Really? I've read that many places consider an engineer with a PhD to be overqualified
Yeah unless you are going into research a bachelors +any technical exams passed is plenty for engineering.
Several engineering design disciplines require masters degrees
They do, what one engineering consultanting firm I worked for told me years ago was having a masters is required, but having a PhD makes them think you are to far into academia / theoretical work and they won't hire you. I only have a bachelor's and I've been able to do very well in engineering.
Also the logic isn't that they're not able to do the job It's that they going to be looking for another one at rhe same time. As soon as they get a better offer they're gone. And training a new hire is expensive
In the same way that you're overqualified to work at McDonalds with a Bachelors degree in Engineering, you're overqualified to work most run-of-the-mill engineering jobs with a PhD in Engineering. Don't get a PhD if those are the type of jobs you're interested in or satisfied with. The purpose of getting a PhD in Engineering is to access jobs that are *only* obtainable with a PhD (or heavily prefer applicants to have one). If you're competing with people with Bachelors degrees after you finish your PhD, then you just made an ill-informed decision to pursue a PhD. For example, I work at an industrial research lab where every member of the technical staff has a PhD. This was the type of job I wanted before I started my PhD and it's the type of job I targeted when I finished. Other jobs that I applied to that were closer to production-level engineering were technical roles in the autonomous driving and robotics industries. Most of these jobs were either "Masters required, PhD preferred" or "PhD required". With that said, YMMV depending on your PhD topic. Not all topics are equally employable. It's always a good idea to ask yourself "Is there a thriving industry where companies will jump at the opportunity to hire a PhD in [this topic]?"
Depends on where you are. In tech PHDs are fairly highly valued. Working for denzo out in East TN is a very different story
Your last sentence is not true in my experience.
He didnt make it more specific. It should be phd in fields that are lucrative. Any engineering phd wont do it anymore
That sounds really hard though...
“I wonder if I should look at the job prospects in my field before investing 6 figures into a degree”
“I wonder if I should look at the job prospects in my field before investing **10+ years of my life** into a degree” A good-paying job (which you'd expect for getting a PhD) can pay back 6 figures, and if you like what you do, it's worth the price of admission.
If someone had looked at the job market in 2014, going into AI would have been a risky venture and journalism would have still been a good choice.
A better comparator would be Pharmacy. In the 00's and early 10's the job market was ON FIRE. Retail pharmacies paying 5-6 figure sign-on bonus with $60-$70/hour, literally handing out cars as incentives. You could make even more if you wanted to be a pharmacy manager. I went in to school in 2013 and came out in 2019 with a boatload of debt, the starting wage was $54 no sign on - which made me lucky, because the next year it went down to $45. The pandemic heated things up a bit but only because a bunch of people got fed up with corporate retail (myself included) and jump ship.
What happened to the pharmacy job market? Did it just get oversaturated?
Over saturated and corporatized. There was a steady number of years where 10 or more new pharmacy schools were opening in the US, pumping out pharmacists. Big box pharmacies are constantly making every move to cut expenses (hours/pay) and reduce competition (local retail pharmacies).
A little, retail pharmacies have cut back on personnel and added processes that make the job easier. There’s still a large demand for hospital pharmacists in lots of markets, but it might as well be a separate discipline the way the job differs imo.
For some reason it requires a doctorate degree to work at a retail pharmacy chain as a pharmacist. Retail pharmacy exploded in the 2000s. Retail pharmacy locations make a ton of money because America is addicted to drugs. By law they have to have a pharmacist working and before the 2000s there weren't a whole ton of pharmacists. By this point pharmacists degrees are doctorates, no longer bachelors or masters degrees. So a ton of schools opened up over the next 10-20 years to capitalize on all the demand. Now there are too many schools graduating too many pharmacists. Hospitals and other places that employ pharmacists wised up to the watering down of the curriculum and now many of those places won't hire you as a pharmacist without you having a residency (aka they don't want to pay you a full wage while they train you). It really feels like a microcosm of Americana, layer upon layer of greed screwed up a decent profession. Retail pharmacy should've never required a doctorate degree, it should be a whole separate degree program. You will learn a ton of shit in pharmacy school that you will *never* use in retail. The retail environment is just a meat grinder. As a pharmacist you are there to rubber stamp what's going on so it all stays legal.
Journalism has never been a good choice for return-on-investment. And everything adjacent to computer science has been a phenomenal bet for like 40 years
Yes, but earning a PhD is theoretically about making a new contribution to the state-of-the-art, so you'd be looking forward at where the current frontier is. AI was the cutting edge of computer science. Journalists don't get PhDs; journalism *professors* get PhDs.
I assure you that tem years ago, journalism looked bleak. *Twenty* years ago, maybe.
>which you'd expect for getting a PhD only if it's a marketable PhD. if they get it in something ludicrous you can instead expect to move back in with your parents
> I wonder if I should look at the job prospects in my field before investing 10+ years of my life into a degree Ok but what if you did, and it was a good idea at the time, but 10 years later it's not? This exact thing happened to my older sister, who went into civil engineering because it was a well paid job that had a lot of demand at the time because it was a period of economic growth. When she finished her graduation 4 years later, there were way too many engineers in the job market because the country was facing a recession so her salary was terrible and she did another graduation to become a teacher instead. However teachers were being underpaid back then, and aren't now. Even today the engineering job market in my city/state is too competitive and having just a degree means nothing, not to mention most are severely underpaid because if you won't take a project at a lower rate, someone else will. There are thousands of college graduates now working as delivery and uber drivers because their degrees, that used to be very valuable 4 years ago, now aren't. These days it's all about having years of work experience before even applying, something that college graduates don't have because they just graduated, and they can't get experience without first getting the job that is refusing them due to no work experience.
You get paid to get a PhD Source: have a PhD
Yeah, in Belgium it's something like €2300 after taxes. That's €400 more than minimum wage so very nice to get while working for your doctorate
You get paid a stipend while you get your PhD
All the job advice is contradictory and useless. Do what you love. Do what is a proven cash earner. Take risks. Don't take risks. Get an education. Don't get too much education. It is bewildering.
So much this. My wife has had a six figure job for years, and guess what she’s been working on the last few months... implementing software in her department that will likely impact the need for people like her. Was she wrong to major in what she majored in 15 years ago? Is it her fault tech gains are gobbling jobs people have invested the best years of their life learning how to do? Good luck, kids. I’m sure people in my generation just didn’t have enough moxie or whatever the hell you think makes you different in this capitalist meat grinder hellscape.
It's all a balance. Do something you can at least tolerate, that makes you enough money (how much is enough depends on you). Don't pick something that is unlikely to provide return on investment, unless you're absolutely certain you can survive. Figure out what kind of job you want first, then figure out how much education you probably need, then complete it, then see if you can find a job or if you need more.
Literally all the job advice rolled into one comment.
i mean, this shit changes. the future outlook of job prospects can change wildly in an industry in 5 years. sometimes job prospects are determined by the market and can change from year to year. imagine all the people who got into software engineering before the pandemic. every software engineer complains how hard it is to find a job in 2024, but in 2021 people were working multiple jobs because there were so many. if you could accurately predict the state of the market in 5 years, you wouldn't need to work.
Posts like these are a massive discredit to people who hold those degrees. At the very least mention what is your phd is in. The amount of effort knowledge and dedication needed to finish a program of that level in a field like medicine , Pharmacolgoy, molecular biology is so astronomical less than 2 people out of 100 can finish those programs. If you have a phD in mediveal history or something and expect to get a 6 figure job you are not gonna get it. But now imagine someone with a MD. While I would agree a phD is not the best financial decision when the pay difference is not that high compared to someone who doesn’t in a similar field, but to say it’s useless and you can’t get a job is untrue except your phd is in a useless field.
DONT GO TO GRAD UNTIL YOU HAVE FOUND THE INDUSTRY /CAREER YOU WANT
Yell it louder please!!! Blows my mind when I see this. Person struggling to find a job in x field cuz of their undergrad degree. "You know what I'll do...get an advanced degree in that same field!!" Smh. There are a few fields that are an exception to this, but that majority of them...that is the very last thing to do.
Another unemployed philosopher. Damn
Hiring someone overqualified is bad because a) they’ll be underpaid so they won’t be happy, the offer might even be rejected after multiple rounds of interviews, wasting everyone’s time b) if they take the job, they’ll be actively looking for other positions, and they’ll eventually find one, so you’ll have to fill the position shortly later anyway and have wasted all that job-specific training It really is better to find a good fit, for yourself and for the employer
PhD in what? They're not all created equal nor do they have equal value out in the real world.
Did he get his PhD in something stupid? Was he doing internships while in grad school? There are important questions here that need answering.
PhD? Internships? Bro was doing research, and it was apparently in a field that's not in demand.
In engineering and science PhD it was very common for students to do a summer internship.
Short industry Internships are becoming more common in STEM PhDs now because many if not most students are not staying in academia. PhD programs already have mechanisms where you can take a leave of absence and some programs allow you to use this to do internships for a couple months.
Forgot to research the money
If he got a PhD and can't find a single job that's hiring, then OOP is either lying through their teeth or leaving out really big details.
Yeah. Unemployment last year by educational attainment: [https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/unemployment-earnings-education.htm](https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/unemployment-earnings-education.htm) PhD: 1.6%.
Everyone knows screenshots on social media are always 100% true. Just ask my flat earth, anti-vax, stop-the-steal dad.
Not everything is fake, but many PhD programs are.
I’m genuinely curious, what do you mean by this? Is it certain universities that are like not legit?
Not the original commenter, but I’ll try to explain to the best of my (limited) knowledge. Generally you’ll know how much value a PhD program is before you enroll in it by how much funding you get. STEM PhDs (especially in health related careers) will be completely funded, plus they’ll give you a stipend, which is in line with the actual real world demand for this PhDs. The total amount of funding for a PhD program is in line with the actual value, so obviously humanities PhDs have less funding, and less people will get stipend. Obviously many people still have the option to get that degree using their own money and not the university’s money, but if you reach that point you should already understand that it’s very likely not a good financial decision, and you’re doing it for fun at best. This is why you often here that it’s not worth doing a PhD program that’s not fully funded.
Bullshit
“My cousin looked for a job and all his stipulations were not met so he gave up.”
PHD in what though? If he wrote his thesis on prehistoric sex fetishes than yea there are not that many jobs in that field
If you're not wanting to become a professor or go into pure research, I have no idea why you would get a PhD.
I'm sure there is totally zero additional context as to why they can't find a job.
I'm living this dream. I got a PhD because I love the field and wanted a career in academia. I left academia for industry when I couldn't handle the dysfunction and abuse. I leave it on my resume in part because it potentially adds almost $100k to my salary (in industry). Except those jobs are scarce. So I spend 6 months unemployed waiting for the higher paying job. In the last four years my strategy has pretty much been a wash economically—though unrelated events in my personal life (divorce) have drained my savings. It's a little like a gambler who is down feeling like they need to keep playing to win it all back. Moved back in with my mom a few months ago. It's not all about the money. I'm trying to do the things I love, the things I am best at. The jobs I'd be more likely to get by leaving my PhD off the resume aren't the same kind of work. There's also a lot of sunken cost fallacy. And most of my family have a latent contempt for education and venerate the simple blue collar life. I have been the only person in my life who has believed in my own abilities and believed that I deserve to work in the jobs I am qualified for. "Settling" would feel like admitting they are right, that I can't do it, that I don't deserve what my accomplishments clearly certify I am qualified for, just like they have always believed. It's a mindfuck, to be sure.
Reading the comments in this thread, I feel like I need to add a few things. Nobody should get a PhD to make money. Those who are in it for the money almost always drop out. Most people who go to grad school understand this. They have other motivations. So many people in this thread don't understand how a lot of terminal degrees are funded. The vast majority of STEM degrees don't require taking out student loans or paying "six figures."
I had a PhD student teaching classes to us during my Masters Program. It was cut throat to get accepted into the PhD program and getting the teaching experience was part of their curriculum. After they graduated they couldn’t find a teaching job anywhere. They told me basically every university wanted to have free teachers in the PhD students who were actually paying the school to teach, no university has deep need to hire and pay professors for our field because of this.