I couldn't get past this line: "the ordeal of attempting to convince someone that I have something of value, and that they should pay me to access it, was very new to me".
I'm not trying to be mean but, how old is the author? How much work experience does he have?
When I was 12 years old I went knocking door to door with my snowshovel in the dead of winter, trying to convince people I had something of value to offer. When I was 14 I convinced a local pizza parlor I had something of value to offer and got my first "real" job.
Trying to convince others of your value and economic worth is a daily affair for most people. It's an accurate way to look at the situation. It shouldn't be a hardship.
It is cool that you snow-shoveled at 12 and held a "real" job in a pizza parlor at 14. However, this is simply not the experience of the vast majority of non-Americans, especially people from India, China & the like. The OP got an engg PhD and is trying to land a gig that matches up to his narrowly defined skillset, not just any random job. I could very much empathize with what he's going through. I got my very first job at 29, and my wife got her first job at 35, my best friend got his first gig at 42! So what did we all do for 30/40 years ? Well, we just studied our asses off. That handicaps us majorly - I don't know how to shovel snow or bake a pizza or any other random skill that most American kids would automatically know because this country prizes working, selling, marketing, labor, work ethic about all else. However, there are other countries where this is not the case. Most of my close friends and classmates are 30-40 year olds working on their vanilla-PhDs, MD-PhDs, MBA-PhDs and other combinatorial degree seeking parasites putting off work until the very last leg of their lives :) We do that because, well, its just the norm in our peer group. If you look at any immigrant graduate student pool especially in Uni towns, you'll find several 30-40 year old fuddy-duddies who have never held a job in their life and wouldn't want to either, until they've obtained every terminal degree possible and exhausted all other academic options!
You can probably find it with a google search, but I'm almost 30.
I would hardly call it a "daily affair". It's the sort of thing you do when you look for a job. That being said, that sentence is somewhat vague. I was referring to the consulting component of the job. Almost all of the jobs I've ever held were salaried jobs where my fit for it was a no-brainer, and all I had to do was convince them that I was better than the next yokel, which was at time difficult. However, the job description was always very well described, and the type of person they were looking for was always pretty clear-cut.
Consulting is a completely different beast. They had a task they wanted to have completed, and they were looking for someone - anyone - who could do it as best as humanly possible. I'm competing against everyone who knows how to do it. The job description is "able to do this job", which to me makes the application process that much more difficult; you have to be able to describe not only why you're qualified, but also why you're the best.
Maybe it's the same thing, but it sure felt different when going through the motions.
Sounds like a confidence issue. With more experience under your belt, you can go into an interview feeling in command of the situation.
When you feel truly confident in your skills, in interview situations you'll make it sound like the only rational thing they can do is hire you. That kind of confidence will come with time.
I'm not trying to be mean but, how old is the author? How much work experience does he have?
When I was 12 years old I went knocking door to door with my snowshovel in the dead of winter, trying to convince people I had something of value to offer. When I was 14 I convinced a local pizza parlor I had something of value to offer and got my first "real" job.
Trying to convince others of your value and economic worth is a daily affair for most people. It's an accurate way to look at the situation. It shouldn't be a hardship.