Andrew,
At least you're employed. It's never the same dealing with all these setbacks without a salary, believe me, I'm there. From time to time, through a lengthy process of saving some money, we manage to get a short holiday. It is generally a trip to a close destination, but that helps, at least for a while. A friend who recently finished her PhD in London, but does not expect to be hired soon and is pregnant, summarised the feeling for me last month: right now, I just want a salary. I know trying to be motivated is the hardest thing, but I guess one must keep trying.

Part II
As I said, I have had more than seventy rejections, and I am only counting the emails and letters from those potential employers, which make the effort to let you know. Sometimes months pass and you never hear from them. With this awful record, I have only received three invitations for interviews. In two of these, the jobs went to candidates that were under qualified. One was for a post-doc position, but it was given to an MPhil graduate. The other, an early-career position in an American University, was given to a candidate who, by the time she started her job, had not had her Viva yet. Funny enough, they were looking for a PhD graduate, media experience (I worked as a journalist for 10 years before starting my PhD), experience working with ethnic migrants (which my research dealt with) and fluency in three languages, which I had, nothing extraordinary (my native language is Spanish, my wife is Portuguese, I had lived in the UK for more than six years at the time). So ONE year after the interview, they informed me that I would not be considered for the position. On the university webpage they announced the new member of staff, who as I said had not finished her PhD at that time, would probably know Spanish from a Latino heritage, but in her CV there were not predictable links with Portuguese, but of course, she was an American citizen, which made the hiring process easier for the university since they would not have to go through all the paperwork required for sponsoring a green card.
I was based in the UK, but I applied for positions in other European countries (Spain, Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Germany) and overseas (Canada, USA, Australia). I have managed to publish three articles in academic journals, a book chapter in and edited book, with two other coming up this 2015 from prestigious academic publishers (Palgrave Macmillan) and keep working on other articles and research proposals, and whenever possible (in terms of logistics) I try to go to conferences and present papers.
I have not abandoned the idea of getting a job though. A good friend of mine told me she sent 68 applications before getting her current job in a very good American university, I always told her I was going to surpass that number.
So, here I am. I also write fiction and have published some books. In these unemployed years, I have finished a collection of short stories, currently being evaluated by a publisher, so I always think that all this hassle would count as research and live-experiences for literature. I wish I could tell a more rewarding tale of good luck and success, but as some of you have already narrated, it’s a jungle out there. Keep the faith.

Hello all,
I guess my story would make some of you abandon all hope.
In March 2015 it will be four years since I finished my PhD. Needless to say, I haven't managed to secure an academic job, otherwise I'd probably be too busy to comment on sites like this. For the past year I have been totally unemployed. In the first three years I remained attached to a university, working in the uni library in a kind of clerical position. It was a part-time job that did not pay much, but at least gave me some benefits, for example, free access to databases and journal articles, which when you lack institutional affiliations it's a good advantage provided that you want to remain "active", that is publishing and embarking on research plans on your own and without funding.
I haven't applied for "everything". I have been rather selective and tailored my CV and cover letter according to the job's specifications. However, I have received 72 rejections since I decided to record them.
Back in the beginning of my PhD, I went once to one of those career workshops aimed at guiding you to get a job in the academic market. At that time, I was unemployed with a tuition fees-only scholarship and in desperate need of a job, because my wife was also looking for a job and we lived in a pretty expensive city. So I had applied for a lot of menial jobs, things I could have done while working on my PhD. I must have sent over 100 applications. When I pointed that out to the workshop trainer (who also happened to have a PhD), she was rather dismissive, as if I had forced her to veer from her main topic. “Nobody sends 100 applications”, she stated matter-of-factly. So, when I started applying for academic jobs, I decided to make a note of every application, to prove her wrong, I guess.
(To be continued)