<p>
How are your social skills these days? I’d venture a guess that that’s why you are having such a hard time on the job market…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Given than finance and actuarial jobs are among the major destinations of math majors (and they generally pay well), you should have considered that in the beginning.</p>
<p>You might not particularly like the job, but as long as you do not hate the job and it pays well, it is certainly a better choice than a job you might not particularly like but pays poorly.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Such as?</p>
<p>A lot of other majors have much worse job and career prospects than math. These include biology, chemistry, humanities, and most social studies.</p>
<p>If you were “too socially crippled to network”, don’t you think that may still be a problem? I’m a microbiology major (that doesn’t plan to go to medical school–want to talk about **** poor job prospects? Tell it to an English major or someone getting a Bachelor’s in science that doesn’t want to go to medical school!) with a $12/hour research internship that I had since my first year at a community college with no clue what I wanted to do. </p>
<p>The blame shouldn’t fall on a degree or your choice of major but your execution. If you are able to get up and get a job that pays decently (and since you’re living with your parents, $12/hour ain’t bad especially if you’re full time) regardless of whether or not it’ll directly relate to your degree, than you need to do it. On your resume at least it’ll show that you’re willing to work regardless of how “trivial” it may be. That shows character and not that you’re sitting on your ass collecting unemployment checks because you’re too good to bite the bullet and work.</p>
<p>Your first problem was that you didn’t have a plan going into being a math major. There’s no point in majoring in something assuming that someone will hire you because you’re majoring in X because that will bite you in the ass really quickly especially in this type of economy. </p>
<p>And you’re getting offered jobs, you just don’t want to do them. There’s a HUGE difference in majoring in something and having 0 job offers including temp work and getting the offers just to do nothing with it because it’s not what you want to do. There are tons of people with college degrees working jobs they hate and are unrelated to their degree because it’s better than nothing. </p>
<p>Why not go back to school to get a higher degree if you’re above working?</p>
<p>“So I already have 4 years of experience under my belt. How come I can’t find a job?”</p>
<p>I’d also know what “find a job” means. Are you waiting for the perfect job to come to you? Do you even live somewhere where there is hiring going on in your field? Sometimes you have to get out there and go to the jobs. You have to do whatever it takes, rather that means starting over in a new city and starting from the bottom and working your way up. That unpaid internship or that ‘too good for me’ entry level job will be worth it for a year or so if it means being offered better work just a year or two down the road. Sometimes people have to take something that’s below them to get started, especially if they’ve been out of the job for awhile. But that’s what they have to do because they need a work.</p>
<p>Eventually the job search will go from being a miserable ‘I can’t find what a want’ search for a dream career or whatever to a ‘oh crap, I have all these bills and payments to pay’ kind of job search.</p>
<p>And I agree, no offense, but work on your attitude. I hope you don’t go into interviews thinking the job won’t be good enough for you because employers can read right through that.</p>
<p>“Seriously rethink this. It is usually easier to find a job when hou already HAVE a job, even if it is a temp job.”</p>
<p>This is true. What are you going to tell people when they ask why you have unemployment gaps? “I can’t find a job because I’m a math major?” ANY job is better than no job. There are tons of other students out here who make this work. It’s not the major, it is the person. Maybe you should talk to some kind of career counsellor or someone to help you with this.</p>
<p>“No. I was told that I could do a lot of things with a degree in math. At one point I contemplated becoming an actuary, but it seemed like too much of a business job for my taste.”</p>
<p>Math could have helped you find a job. You just didn’t want the job.</p>
<p>* “You still haven’t defined what’s going to “find a job”. I am a humanities/anthro major and I just got a call about an interview for a job that pays $17/hour+ with the state of Michigan (that I just applied for last night).”*</p>
<p>That’s not bad at all. I was making close to that amount of money just last year when I was employed.</p>
<p>“Not too shabby for 20 and without a degree (and studying something “useless” at that). 30 year old math major with a degree and still no job?”</p>
<p>I had a job for 4 years, doing something unrelated to math, making roughly the amount of money you are making at the age of 20, but lost it.</p>
<p>“I’m thinking it’s not the job market at this point…”</p>
<p>I got my college degree. I graduated with honors. If my resume sends off negative vibes there is nothing I can do about it. I did my part and I did what I could.</p>
<p>* And you definitely don’t deserve a welfare/unemployment check.*</p>
<p>Why are you judging me? Do you even know me?</p>
<p>*Those <em>should</em> only be for people who legitimately want to work- and work whatever job comes their way. *</p>
<p>“Work whatever job comes their way”… Suppose that I find a 3 month temp job that pays $12/hour. After you do all the math, suppose I would effectively make $600 a month less than if I were receiving unemployment benefits. Not only that, but after the 3 month gig is over, I am no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. It’s not that I am waiting for a $100,000/year job. I am waiting for something relevant.</p>
<p>"Seriously rethink this. It is usually easier to find a job when hou already HAVE a job, even if it is a temp job. "</p>
<p>I disagree. You can’t be asking for time off to go to interviews plus you have to be careful about naming on your resume your current place of employment. You don’t want some headhunter/prospective employer calling your current place of employment. Besides, I would be so wasted devoting almost all of my waking hours to a job (10-12 hours per day including commute) that I am not sure I’d have a lot of energy at the end of the day to send resumes and make phone calls like after 7 PM.</p>
<p>Finding a job, especially in this economy, takes a lot of work and energy. There are people willing to do what it takes, and those who won’t. If you have a job and get called for an interview, worry about that when it happens. Most preliminary interviews are via phone anyway.</p>
<p>Ehh just leave him alone. He’s just going to continue making excuses and venting to us instead of sending out apps. That’s exactly why you’re in the situation you’re in now. Talking to you is like talking to a wall. Seriously.</p>
<p>Dude, your only flaw is your attitude. The tone I get from your posts is that your “above” all jobs unrelated to your math degree.</p>
<p>Not at all. It’s not about being “above” jobs unrelated to a math degree. It’s about not being good enough at jobs that require a skill set that is not the skill set I am good at. Why do you think they kissed me good bye at my last job (IT)? The people who hired me figured “well, his transcript shows that he did well in his math and computer sciences courses, he is not stupid so he can do this job” but it turned out that I could barely do it. Was it because I was lazy? Was it because I had a bad attitude? No, it was because the job itself required a set of cognitive abilities that’s not the same set of cognitive abilities you utilize when you solve a math problem or write a computer program. It’s just different, and you wouldn’t know that difference unless you have had a real IT job.</p>
<p>“On top of that, you didn’t even have a damn career path.”</p>
<p>That’s true. I never really figured out what career paths were available for a math major. When I asked what I could do with a degree in math I was told I could do a lot of things: engineering, programming, science, teaching, pretty much everything. Nobody told me “these are the career paths available for a math major, pick one, this is what the career path consists of, or you will never find a job”.</p>
<p>"You just majored in math thinking “oh…some place will hire me simply because I’m a math major.”</p>
<p>Correct.</p>
<p>“Life doesn’t work like that. You have to have a set career goal and work towards it. From your posts, it seems like you wanted your career to come to you as opposed to you working hard towards it.”</p>
<p>Well. If I had studied law the career path would have been obvious. If I had studied medicine the career path would have been obvious. If I had studied engineering the career path would have been obvious. At no point during my 4 year college career did I find a guide indicating exactly what each career path for a math major entailed. I never saw a guide saying "want to go into the actuarial sciences with your math degree? Then do this internship by the end of your sophomore year, take these classes before the end of your junior year, do this other internship, do this part-time job, spend your summers doing X, etc. That information never was available to me. When I asked for help at the career center, and I asked for help many times, I was given an attitude and treated contemptuously because I couldn’t figure it out myself. The only advice I got from the career center was “you can do a lot of jobs with a degree in math”. But that’s all they told me. I was somehow supposed to guess the rest, as if I could read the minds of the hiring managers and know exactly what specific internships/jobs I had to have done by the time I graduated from college.</p>
<p>“Yeah and the people I know working those jobs had CAREER GOALS,”</p>
<p>Again, i just majored in math. I didn’t pick a career. Math major is not a career.</p>
<p>" they INTERNED during their time in college,"</p>
<p>Good for them. They found internships. I didn’t find an internship. I was told “well, you are a math major, this internship is a science/programming/engineering internship, why are you applying for it?”</p>
<p>“and most of all they had a POSITIVE ATTITUDE despite being reminded that it would be hard to find jobs in this economy.”</p>
<p>Positive attitude does not magically make me more desirable in the eyes of people who have never even seen me or talked to me.</p>
<p>“Not to be mean, I have no sympathy for you.”</p>
<p>I can’t help it.</p>
<p>"You just seem negative, pompous, and unwilling to put your pride aside to get a job while you look for a better one. "</p>
<p>In spite of my mental illnesses and all the problems that prevent me from living a normal life I am not sure why you still think that my problem is negativity, pompousness and pride. It is true that I don’t want a call center job. You would think that I think I am too good for that type of job, don’t you? But why don’t you think for a moment and consider the possibility that just because a person is “good” at doing math he is not necessarily very good at processing and retaining spoken information? When I was working at the IT company, do you know how many times people called me and explained a problem just to ask them to repeat everything twice and thrice because I couldn’t grasp what they were saying?</p>
<p>"How are your social skills these days? I’d venture a guess that that’s why you are having such a hard time on the job market… "</p>
<p>I email resumes. Every now and then I get phone calls. The interviews go well but the impression I get is that my experience is not what they are looking for. (I got pigeonholed with obsolete technology.)</p>
<p>As to my social skills? I am not a social butterfly, and I don’t think I’ll ever be. I can’t help my lack of mental agility and it is just not possible for me to fake an interpersonal style that’s not there. I have currently tried 4 different meds and none of them helped me with primary problem. Early next month I will ask my psychiatrist to put me on a different med.</p>
<p>*
“Given than finance and actuarial jobs are among the major destinations of math majors (and they generally pay well), you should have considered that in the beginning.”*</p>
<p>I think the pay is kind of irrelevant at this point. I already took it for granted that I am not good enough for any job that pays more than $50,000/year. At this point I am just looking for a solid permanent job with benefits and a salary in the $30,000-$45,000 range. Of course, I want a job doing something that I have the ability to get good at, not a job that causes me to spend every single moment of my life contemplating suicide.</p>
<p>“You might not particularly like the job, but as long as you do not hate the job and it pays well, it is certainly a better choice than a job you might not particularly like but pays poorly.”</p>
<p>That’s true. It’s not only a matter of liking or not liking the job. It’s also a matter of having the set of mental abilities necessary to get good at that job. If the job requires you that process X amount of information in Y amount of time, but you can only process X/10 amount of information in Y amount of time, the problem is not so much the attitude but the fact that maybe you are not a good fit for that job. All in all, I would have preferred a job that I can tolerate but that pays poorly, since I take it for granted that I am not qualified for a job that pays a high amount of money. My happiness at this point is infinitely more important than a high paying job, which is out of the question.</p>
<p>*"Such as?</p>
<p>A lot of other majors have much worse job and career prospects than math. These include biology, chemistry, humanities, and most social studies. "*</p>
<p>Computer science. Engineering.</p>
<p>“If you were “too socially crippled to network”, don’t you think that may still be a problem?”</p>
<p>I am not as socially crippled as I was back then, but I still don’t enjoy interacting with people. I went to the park today. Spent an hour talking to a friendly old man. He was very talkative, but I was bored to death listening to him. Meanwhile, I wanted to find a way to excuse myself but at the same time I did not want to seem rude. I just can’t help it. Some people love being around people. I don’t. I feel uncomfortable.</p>
<p>"I’m a microbiology major (that doesn’t plan to go to medical school–want to talk about **** poor job prospects? Tell it to an English major or someone getting a Bachelor’s in science that doesn’t want to go to medical school!) with a $12/hour research internship that I had since my first year at a community college with no clue what I wanted to do. "</p>
<p>$12/hour research internship is not as bad as $12/hour full time job after you get your degree.</p>
<p>"The blame shouldn’t fall on a degree or your choice of major but your execution. If you are able to get up and get a job that pays decently (and since you’re living with your parents, $12/hour ain’t bad especially if you’re full time) regardless of whether or not it’ll directly relate to your degree, than you need to do it. On your resume at least it’ll show that you’re willing to work regardless of how “trivial” it may be. "</p>
<p>But the thing is, I haven’t had those job offers yet. But I probably wouldn’t even take such a job unless I had no choice, since as I said, I can do better collecting unemployment benefits and I need my health insurance in order to pay for my medications. Do you think that $12/hour temp jobs come with benefits like health insurance and those things?</p>
<p>"
Your first problem was that you didn’t have a plan going into being a math major. There’s no point in majoring in something assuming that someone will hire you because you’re majoring in X because that will bite you in the ass really quickly especially in this type of economy. "</p>
<p>They told me I could do a lot of things with a degree in math.
*
“And you’re getting offered jobs…”*</p>
<p>False.
*
"There’s a HUGE difference in majoring in something and having 0 job offers including temp work and getting the offers just to do nothing with it because it’s not what you want to do. There are tons of people with college degrees working jobs they hate and are unrelated to their degree because it’s better than nothing. "*</p>
<p>I have not applied to any job related to math, since those jobs either don’t really exist or I am not qualified for them. I apply for jobs in IT since that’s where my experience lies. I’ve been invited to interviews but nobody has extended a job offer. My experience is not what they are looking for.</p>
<p>“I’d also know what “find a job” means. Are you waiting for the perfect job to come to you? Do you even live somewhere where there is hiring going on in your field?”</p>
<p>I am not waiting for a perfect job. I am waiting for a job. In 1 year I have had 0 job offers. I live near a major US city. There are plenty of companies around here where in theory I could work.</p>
<p>“You have to do whatever it takes, rather that means starting over in a new city and starting from the bottom and working your way up. That unpaid internship or that ‘too good for me’ entry level job will be worth it for a year or so if it means being offered better work just a year or two down the road.”</p>
<p>If your logic is correct then how come my 4 years of experience in IT are worthless? Do you think that 1 or 2 years in data entry will make me a more desirable employee?</p>
<p>“Eventually the job search will go from being a miserable ‘I can’t find what a want’ search for a dream career or whatever to a ‘oh crap, I have all these bills and payments to pay’ kind of job search.”</p>
<p>If it comes down to that I will just have to take a job at McDonald’s. (Assuming that they don’t reason I am overqualified.)</p>
<p>"ANY job is better than no job. There are tons of other students out here who make this work. It’s not the major, it is the person. Maybe you should talk to some kind of career counsellor or someone to help you with this. "</p>
<p>I have talked to career counselors. I have talked to psychologists, too. They couldn’t help me.</p>
<p>actuary??? why the hell didn’t you do that? you could’ve taken some business classes… etc. econ, and all the pre req(you’ve already got math, since you’re a math major).</p>
<p>"actuary??? why the hell didn’t you do that? you could’ve taken some business classes… etc. econ, and all the pre req(you’ve already got math, since you’re a math major). "</p>
<p>I took the classes. I took microeconomics, macroeconomics, accounting, finance, computer science electives. I just didn’t like the idea that I had to continue studying and passing actuarial exams in order to be able to hold an actuarial job. I can’t do a 50 hour a week job and on top of that study some dry subject. I don’t have the energy or the intellect to absorb large amounts of information in short amounts of time. What’s the point of having a job that pays “a lot of money” if I am going to hate every single moment of my life?</p>
<p>“woe is me.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you did well as a math major in school, what makes you think that you have only 1/10 the mental ability to process information compared to others who go into actuarial or finance jobs (typical math major jobs)?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why would you think that computer science and engineering jobs would be any different, in terms of mental abilities needed?</p>
<p>If anyone isn’t actually reading his posts:</p>
<p>-he is saying that it’s impossible to place into a typical job as a math graduate (actuary, engineer, computer scientist) when you did not have that set career goal upon starting college</p>
<p>-unemployment is preferable to the jobs he could technically be getting (his reasons make a lot of sense strategically and mathematically)</p>
<p>-he is unfairly disadvantaged by his medical disorders (they make it difficult to interview but not to do the job itself)</p>
<p>What are counter-arguments to those three things?</p>
<p>Counter-arguments:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You don’t need a career goal upon starting college, but half-way through would be a good time to start working on career development. I would also like to point out that a computer science major with social anxiety and no practical experience is just as unemployable as a math major. Choosing a “practical” major may have not made any difference for him at all.</p></li>
<li><p>I disagree with this morally but it might make sense from an economic point of view.</p></li>
<li><p>How could his condition not affect his job performance? If it’s difficult for him to interact with people, he would probably have a hard time with collaboration or customer service. If he’s a hermit, he wouldn’t contribute to the morale in the company. If he lacks drive and ambition, he’s unlikely to deliver a top notch performance. He’d have to be able to offer something very special (beyond what a normal college graduate knows) to make employers look beyond his condition.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“If you did well as a math major in school, what makes you think that you have only 1/10 the mental ability to process information compared to others who go into actuarial or finance jobs (typical math major jobs)?”</p>
<p>Ever heard of the English major who could write wonderful papers but couldn’t do math? Ever heard of the Engineering major who couldn’t write well? Some people are good at all intellectual tasks, but some people are good at one or two things and suck at everything else. The type of intelligence required to solve a math problem is not the same type of intelligence required to read a 50 page guide and process all the information. Study psychology if you think I’m bull****ing you. You don’t have to study anything, just take my word. When I had the IT job, new kids got hired to work at the company all the time. Within 6 months they were outperforming. It’s not a lie. This topic came up multiple times during my job performance reviews.</p>
<p>"Why would you think that computer science and engineering jobs would be any different, in terms of mental abilities needed? "</p>
<p>That’s a good point. I would probably run into the same obstacles. However, if I were a computer science major perhaps I would qualify for programming jobs, which is something that I can do. But because I am a math major, I qualify only for jobs that are at worst only customer service oriented or at best barely programming oriented.</p>
<p>“-he is saying that it’s impossible to place into a typical job as a math graduate (actuary, engineer, computer scientist) when you did not have that set career goal upon starting college”</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s impossible, but so far that has been my experience. My only luck was the IT company from which I ended up getting fired from. They took a risk that they probably wish they hadn’t taken, since they ended up firing me.</p>
<p>“-unemployment is preferable to the jobs he could technically be getting (his reasons make a lot of sense strategically and mathematically)”</p>
<p>It’s a bummer when you have 4 years of experience in IT and all the jobs you could theoretically qualify for are data entry or customer service jobs. It’s not so much that most of those jobs are temporary, that they pay less than unemployment benefits, that they lack health benefits (which I need in order to pay for my medications), or that taking them would automatically kill my ability to collect unemployment benefits in the future should I continue unemployed, it’s also the fact that as I have said many times but people here refuse to believe me, doing math or writing code requires a different set of abilities than processing spoken information.</p>
<p>“-he is unfairly disadvantaged by his medical disorders (they make it difficult to interview but not to do the job itself)”</p>
<p>Actually, I think they make it more difficult to do the job itself than interview. So far the problem with interviews is that interviewers realize very quickly that my IT experience is not the type of experience they are looking for. Doing the job itself is more difficult since very few jobs out there for which I might theoretically qualify are only math or only programming.</p>
<p>“1. You don’t need a career goal upon starting college, but half-way through would be a good time to start working on career development.”</p>
<p>Which in this case is irrelevant.</p>
<p>" I would also like to point out that a computer science major with social anxiety and no practical experience is just as unemployable as a math major. Choosing a “practical” major may have not made any difference for him at all."</p>
<p>I doubt it. A computer science major is more attractive than a math major. A computer science major would have had an easier time finding an internship than a math major. And one more thing, I don’t have social anxiety. I wish my problem was that simple :)</p>
<p>“2. I disagree with this morally but it might make sense from an economic point of view.”</p>
<p>I morally disagree with the fact that when I was in undergrad school no career adviser helped me figure out all the things that I figured out the hard way after I graduated from college.</p>
<p>“3. How could his condition not affect his job performance? If it’s difficult for him to interact with people, he would probably have a hard time with collaboration or customer service.”</p>
<p>No, the problem is not shyness. The problem is not sociopathy.</p>
<p>"If he’s a hermit, he wouldn’t contribute to the morale in the company. If he lacks drive and ambition, he’s unlikely to deliver a top notch performance. He’d have to be able to offer something very special (beyond what a normal college graduate knows) to make employers look beyond his condition. "</p>
<p>I like it how you make it all sound like the problem is a flaw of character and not an actual brain defect that makes it difficult for me to process and absorb information in a normal manner.</p>
<p>If you put half the energy into looking for work that you put into argung with posters here who are offering suggestions, you’d probably have several job offers!</p>
<p>Seriously, it takes work, dedication and a positive attitude. Your unemployment will run out and then that temp job will start to look a bit better to you. And btw, read this [Unemployed</a>? Then Don’t Bother Applying | BNET](<a href=“MoneyWatch: Financial news, world finance and market news, your money, product recalls updated daily - CBS News”>MoneyWatch: Financial news, world finance and market news, your money, product recalls updated daily - CBS News)</p>
<p>but buck up-- it was followed by this <a href=“http://www.theworkbuzz.com/current-affairs/really-new-report-says-its-easier-to-find-a-job-when-unemployed/[/url]”>Home – The Work Buzz;
from the second article:
</p>
<p>* “If you put half the energy into looking for work that you put into argung with posters here who are offering suggestions, you’d probably have several job offers!”*</p>
<p>Maybe I would have job offers. Maybe not. It’s kind of hard to tell when your experience is worthless and nobody cares about anything you have to offer.</p>
<p>“Seriously, it takes work, dedication and a positive attitude. Your unemployment will run out and then that temp job will start to look a bit better to you.”</p>
<p>When unemployment runs out I will erase the line on my resume that says that I have a college degree and start applying to work at McDonald’s. The idea is to find a way to stay alive, right?</p>
<p>" And btw, read this Unemployed? Then Dont Bother Applying | BNET"</p>
<p>Networking works for socially intelligent people. There is no point in being friends with people who can give you jobs if they think you are a dumbass.</p>
<p>Maybe they think you are a dumbass because you project the image of being a dumbass. Thats where you need to start your work. Your attitude. Really, it makes a huge difference. It sounds like you are stuggling with a mood disorder (depression, anxiety) low self esteem and possibly a touch of Aspergers? Is your therapist helpful? If not, there are others who can be.</p>
<p>Oh, and if your resume isnt getting any hits, have someone reread it and make some suggestions. Do your parents work? Do they have contacts? If so use them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>People in types of jobs that CS and engineering majors take have to read and write documentation.</p>
<p>Also, how did you handle the typically required reading/writing, humanities, and social studies courses in school? Or did you go to a school like Amherst or Brown with no such requirements?</p>