‘It’s not you, it’s the market’: Reddit rallies behind honours graduate struggling to find work
A young graduate sits alone on concrete steps while deep in thought
A post on Reddit’s r/jobs from a recent University of Washington honours graduate with a double major in Social Work and Criminal Justice, minors in Sociology, fluency in French, German and English, and over 200 hours of volunteering experience has shared how they expected that their academic achievement, language skills, and hands-on advocacy experience would at least make the job search manageable.
Instead, entry-level positions are advertising requirements of four or more years of experience, and genuine hiring seems to be happening almost nowhere. Her boyfriend, who studied Business Accounting and Math at the same university, is in the same position.
Both have considered pursuing a master’s degree to improve their prospects, but both feel lost about whether that would actually help or simply defer the problem.
What Reddit said
The thread’s most consistent message was: it is not the degrees. It is the market.
“It’s not just entry level,” one commenter wrote. “I have years of experience and got let go this year, and I’m in the same pile of applicants as everyone else. The problem isn’t your degree; there are just too many people per opening right now.”
Another with a decade of experience who had been laid off and was applying to entry-level roles with no success offered direct sympathy: “This is so [expletive]. I’m so sorry you graduated this year. It’s not you, it’s the market.”
A third added another layer that may not have been fully considered: “It’s even worse if you’re laid off and over 50, but right now it stinks for almost everyone.”
Two responses stood out for pointing toward concrete paths forward:
One flagged the original poster’s language skills as an underutilised asset: “With your language fluency, have you considered a program or internship abroad?”
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Another offered specific guidance on the MSW question: “Get your MSW. It will only take one year because you have a BSW. Job opportunities with an MSW are numerous.”
The original poster’s situation is by now a familiar pattern in these threads. The unfortunate state of the job market is making people feel like they are failing, when in reality, it’s the status quo that couldn’t keep up.
Read related: 1,098 applications. 9 interviews. 762 rejections. Welcome to the job market
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