Start The Slideshow

Eric Auld is 26-year-old with a Master’s in English, a couple lists on McSweeney’s, and a job as an “Adjunct Lecturer in English.”  And yet, like a male version of the characters in Girls, he cannot get a full-time employment in New York City.

So after applying to hundreds of job listings on the Internet, Mr. Auld conducted an experiment “to find out more on where I stood in this uncertain job market.” He did this by creating a fake job listing for an Administrative Assistant on Craigslist. And then writing about it on Thought Catalog, home of semi-employed Adjunct Professors of English everywhere.

His results were enlightening? Sort of? He had 653 replies, which he then sorted into a coffee-stained pie charts of experience and level of schooling. He finished by concluding that people on Craigslist should apply for jobs the moment they go up, and that no one cares about your resume, and also adjunct professors have way too much time and are terrible at conducting research experiments.

This story was fascinating enough to get him on NPR, home to all Associate English Professors.

But what we found most useful in this study were the “conclusions” of the article’s commenters…