It's not clear that a self-trained design novice would have much more luck finding work, unless he turns out to have a natural genius at it.
He'd be competing for work against experienced designers, and against newly-graduated design students.
He'd be competing for work against experienced designers, and against newly-graduated design students.
At the same time though, for instance, he told me that he is very interested in trying to find some foreign policy-related job where he could leverage his language skills. So I asked him why not start a blog where he offered commentary on events occurring in that region -- but again here, he expressed a lack of any real motivation in actually getting the blog up and running and doing posts on it.
It's just very difficult for me to empathize with someone like that.
Practice and good taste is pretty much the only things in design. Low-end design is pretty much just keeping up with the lowest common denominator in design style, anybody moderately trained--or self trained--can do it.
Sure. It happens. But that's not the way to bet.