The highs and lows of finishing my PhD

B

I hate to share negativity but I had to get this off my chest.

I recently passed my PhD with minor corrections. Having addressed these corrections I resubmitted within two weeks and I was soon greeted with a letter confirming that I had succesfully passed my PhD. I was ecstatic to say the least, but this was short lived as I have been on job seekers for five weeks and I'm faced with the constant worry of securing a job. This worry was reconfirmed today, a day which I can only describe as the most demoralising and depressing day of my life.

At the job centre, I had an interview to discuss my job search progress. I have made considerbale effort in searching for jobs in academia, the public sector and even more temporary lower level jobs just to get me back into work. However, my so-called adviser insisted that I need to focus my attention on lower level jobs. This was not what I took issue with, what I found to be completely sole destroying was the fact that she insisted that I needed to apply for two jobs she had found whilst searching through the data base. The first was a job as a bingo caller and the second a household refuse sorter (yes, someone who sorts through rubbish). Don't get me wrong, the bingo callers and refuse sorters of this world have an important role in society (especially the bingo callers!) but I was close to jumping out of the window at this point. Have I really spent the last 7 years of my life at university to work in a bingo hall...I truly do hope not! I found this rather insulting and I felt it completely undermined the conisderable hard work I had put in to complete my PhD. Perhaps I should have become a bingo caller upon leaving school at 16...I could have been the best bingo caller in the UK by now...if only.
I was also told to remove 'Dr' from my CV. As I'm sure the vast majority of PhD's have done, I have made considerable sacrafice for three years to gain the title of Dr, yet just a week after I am able to do so I'm told I need to hide this! I'm a little confused.

L

Honestly I wouldn't read too much into it, you have to remember that the advisor is just doing they're job and needs to reduce the number of unemployed people as quickly as possible. Also it's unlikely that they have a good understanding of the specific job you want (they can't know everything about every job).
When I was job hunting before I started the phd I went to the job centre and told them my degree and what I was looking for I got a stoney silence and a 'so what are you really looking for?' But having said that not all advisors are the same in the month I went there I had other advisors who knew they couldn't really offer me any help but knew I was trying.

S

The job centre is an awful place to search for a job (ironic eh?). Make sure you are on all the usual suspects like monster etc and check out jobs.ac.uk and also contact everyone you know about whether they have jobs available. Most high level jobs do not put their positions up in the job centre anyway so they won't be available to the advisor.

As mentioned below, the job of a "job advisor" is to reduce the unemployment rate (with wonderful targets to meet - because they are a great way of motivating people to do a good job - honest!), as such they will just try to get you into any work they can as quickly as possible. You have to complete so many job interviews per month to keep on job seekers. One way of doing this without taking a crappy job is to deliberately screw up the interviews. I don't condone this, but people do it. Alternatively, get a job at a bar or something whilst conducting your own job search. You will have more money than on job seekers and because it's evening work you should still have plenty of 9-5 time to search for a "proper" job.

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