Familiar with this problem (Score 1)

My wife had the same problem. She spent 10 years on a CS degree studying something esoteric but at that point had little to no programming ability. With my help, she still managed to get a good job and there's a few strategies you can use to help. First, you can try looking for places that value advanced education. Government jobs tend to do that because contractors get paid more. I work in EDA and they tend to value strong engineering backgrounds due to the domain. Any kind of sciency place will probably value it. Same goes for research labs and hedge funds. Second, look for places that have hired people like you. I found my wife's job by Googling "LinkedIn [city] [field]". A guy's profile came up and I saw where he worked and passed on the company names to my wife. You can also find people at local universities and see what their profiles say. She then cold emailed them, got an interview, and then a job. Turns out they only hire Phds. Third, broaden your search. May not like the idea but look for jobs that just want a Phd and don't care what kind. Intel has lots of jobs like these, for example, where they just need a smart person to do program management or operations research or something that there's simply not much research on. Fourth, aim for smaller shops. Monster and other resume farms haven't scaled. Look for smaller startups solving hard problems that don't have time or money to go out looking for people, valuing an existing connection and someone they can relate to instead. Look for cofounders wanted or other entrepreneurship groups near you. Last, laser focus your search. Find companies working in your domain of expertise and just cold email or even call them. Don't let you social anxiety get in the way. It works - really! If you're having trouble getting your resume noticed in a haystack b/c of your narrow field, just imagine how hard it is for them to. Having just the right guy walk in the door with no work is of real value to them, even if they're not currently hiring.