OP. I am a little bit surprised that your job search has not been successful. The skills learned in microbiology at the bachelor level are quite transferable to other fields, such as, pathology, biochemistry, cell biology, to name a few. Might you have been limiting yourself to jobs that advertise for microbiologists specifically? Might you have been underestimating the applicability of your skill sets? It is common place nowadays for companies to read and filter job applications digitally; hence it is important to have the right key words in one’s CV/resume for a job in the industry to make the first cut; whereas in a CV/resume for graduate school it would be beneficial to emphasize one’s understanding of the science. I think that you are ready for work or continuing on at the Ph.D. level.