Overqualified for the Job? oO

[Gahn]

This post has been copied from Techrepublic. Original article here

Of all the reasons to be rejected for a job, being told you’re “overqualified” really sucks. There are many reasons someone might look for a position that is “under the station” of what he normally would do. For example, managers who have had enough of the personnel issues that come up too often may seek a position that has no direct reports. Sometimes technical people discover they don’t like project management as much as writing code.

Such is the case with one guy who recently wrote to me. He said:

“I currently work as a software development manager but I don’t like the job I’m doing for a lot of reasons. I’ve applied many times for a senior developer position in other companies and had dozens of interviews. All my interviewers were impressed by my development skills but nobody wanted to hire me. Two interviewers asked me: now, you command a large team of developers and testers and you’re a member of the management of your company, are you sure you will accept to be commanded by a (simple) development team leader? I said yes. But I think they didn’t believe me.”

I can understand to some extent the fear of the hiring managers. They don’t want to hire someone who is going to be unchallenged by the role. What I don’t understand is why they can’t take the job candidate’s word at face value.

My guess is that the candidate’s not making himself crystal clear as to the reasons he’d be happy with a less-responsible position. I would prepare a statement that explains why the senior development position is more attractive without being negative about his previous duties. In other words, he shouldn’t say, “I hated management,” but rather, “After a few months in that job, I discovered that what I really missed was the intensity and focus of a purely development role.”

So what about you guys? Have you ever had to “sell yourself” for a position that others deemed below your stature? How’d you handle it?

 

[Kryten]

All the time. I'm naturally modest and people are always suggesting I go for stations that I'm convinced are way above me.

A good example would be the lowest of the low. Lower than the fact I've just filled in a night shelf stacker application form for Asda across the road.

PC World.

It wasn't PC world specifically, they were branching off into a new support company called Press F1 (now called The "Tech" Guys who between them don't know the difference between a PC and a grape). I was stuck in an administrative role and needed to get a foothold into IT, even it meant working for DSG.
Interview went well, my CV wasn't littered with IT related positions but cited skills way beyond the remit of anyone that wasn't highly educated or held several previous engineering positions.
It got to the second stage - interview passed, now there's a practical test. The first was bollocks : all mathematical related. I questioned why there was a need to calculate how much bread is left after you've eaten 40% of the loaf; I've an IQ of 168 and not very good at maths, but was assured it was just an "aptitude" test for the mind. Second test was a practical thing : you've got 2 separate tests, 1, build a PC from the parts on a desk, then 2. diagnose the pre-programmed software faults and repair them.
You had 45 minutes for each step.
10 minutes into 1, I had completed 1. and 2.

Follow up interview.
"Your test results were astonishing, far beyond anyone else who took the test at the same time as yourself, and probably one of the best we've seen come to us. However, we're not happy that you'd be with us for very long, you don't have the degrees or qualifications that I do yet you're better at my job than I am, and I'm the one supposed to be telling you what to do. That will be taken into consideration".

2 days later, rejection letter in the post.

It's a very common problem. Employers like a clean slate, they don't want someone else's habits to deal with. They like moronic, empty headed students, and are aware that the qualifications provided by school and university are 95% meaningless in a real world situation, that 95% gets filled in by what they do in the workplace.
It's crap, but very little can be done about it :|

I'm starting to realise that lack of qualifications itself is not important, I've had 2 job offers this morning, one for 30k and one for 25k. The former involves skills I don't have (SQL) as well as my usual hardware maintenance stuff, but they're prepared to take a risk on the strength of my CV and ability to pick up a skill at the drop of a hat.

 

[Kryten]

Separately, are you Toni Bowers or do you just like copy and pasting articles from elsehwere?

 

[gunner440]

He is doing research for his high school project!

 

[Bob007]

For me i kinda got into IT as a job fairly late. Last 5 years or so is the only time I've tried to make a living out of it. All my experiance comes from my own or friends puters. I work in a retail outlet for puters for all this time either full time or part time. During my time at the shop I've install a domain accross 6 shops using 2k3 and AD (all be in samll, I thought any experiance better then none), Installed an E-Pos system again accross all 6 shops. Managed my own sucsessfull and still running shop for 2 years. Even trained up staff to not only use the epos and domain stuff but a few of em I trained to repair puters. 1 even runs his own shop now. I've built, diagnosed, repaired troubleshooted what must be 100's of thousands of MS based puters in my time. From legacy dos stuff right though to Vista, done some MAC and Linux stuff again on customer puters and my own. I converse with ppl on a daily bases over phone, email and face to face. I dream of an office job. I hate joe public. sry. but most of you shouldn't own a puter after some of the shit I've seen. "you runing windows ?" "yes" What version of windows you runing ?" "Dell!" wtf!!! and the list goes on and get bigger every week.

Can i get an office type IT job. Can i f*ck.

Even at 1st line jobs at getting a "no" which kinda gets annoying. I've sort of taken myself off the job market and go back to school. I figure if i fill my CV with lots of abreviated(sp?) words. It might impress some of the peeps that interview me and i can tailor and filter the CV to fit the jobs needs.

I dunno what i would of done with that bloke. You don't want a team feeling threatened by someone who is clearly better at there job then they are but also I kinda know how he feels.

Anyway this kinda turned into a rant. Think i need more Tea and back to my studies.

 

[Kryten]

I found my biggest improvement came from removing my school based stuff entirely from my CV. It doesn't even mention I have GCSEs.

Name.
Contact details.
Skills
Employment History (only those relevant to the task)
References.

Thats it. Mine comes to exactly a single side of A4. Beforehand I had all sorts of gubbins about schools, GCSEs, "objectives", full employment history.

Now people see my skills first and foremost. "Ah, these are his listed skills, and below are positions he has or may have used them in. Interview, please" rather than wading through loads of shit like "I'm willing to learn, I'd have an MCSE if I could afford it, I'm a people person" and all that bollocks. Save that for the interview

 

[Cadelin]

I can understand to some extent the fear of the hiring managers. They don’t want to hire someone who is going to be unchallenged by the role. What I don’t understand is why they can’t take the job candidate’s word at face value.

In general people don't think you are over qualified. They think there is a hidden problem. In alot of cases people who are well qualified but have trouble finding jobs is because they cause problems. Its not just people who act like arseholes either, if you are a manager and you are being too nice to people who aren't doing their job properly, that can cause as many problems as if you are a bastard.

If you are a manager and you are leaving because it was too stressful or you didn't enjoy dealing with person problems you are effectively saying: "I failed at my job to manage people and I am trying to escape"

In a situation like that you want to talk about how you left the team in a good shape but you are applying for a different job, because you want work closer to home, the working hours were less flexible etc.

 

[Deebs]

Gahn,

If you are copying posts from other sites on here please ensure you put source of the post. This is clearly a copy and paste and therefore I will edit the original message to indicate this.

Failing to do this will result in your ability to post being removed.

 

[Gahn]

Separately, are you Toni Bowers or do you just like copy and pasting articles from elsehwere?

I just share with you lot the most interesting things from Techrepublic.com -.-
And am not entirely sure i can just link it cause you need to be registered to get those afaik.

Edit: in fact Deebs showed it was a blog article, didn't noticed in between the various mails, sry again!

 

[Gahn]

Gahn,

If you are copying posts from other sites on here please ensure you put source of the post. This is clearly a copy and paste and therefore I will edit the original message to indicate this.

Failing to do this will result in your ability to post being removed.

Oops oks dude, wasn't intended to be a rule breaking by me.

 

[Deebs]

No worries. Thanks for understanding.

For the record it is actually defined in the CoC

 

[Kryten]

End of the day Gahn, the posts/threads are interesting enough to get a discussion, we just need to cover our backs legally as much as possible. We all know how backstabby the industry can get

 

[Bob007]

I found my biggest improvement came from removing my school based stuff entirely from my CV. It doesn't even mention I have GCSEs.

tbh getting to interview stage isn't normally a problem. Use to be but in 1 of my former employment tracks(i've had a few ) as a mechanic I did some work for a bloke who made a living getting paid to do CV,s so as part of the deal with his car he did mine. Best thing i ever did.

Maybe and quite probably its me. Ask me whats wrong wid ya puter, I could prob give 50 faults, Ask me why i want to work at this company and my brain goes on holiday Something i'll look at down the line. For now am doing OK. With the shop, college and my own customer base, theres food on the table and roof over our heads. That will do me as i am

P.S. For Gahn, Just get into the habbit of putting [ url = (webby) ] source [ / url] at the end of ya post

 

[Kryten]

Aye, I've had some really serious brainfreeze beforehand.
Was an interview for what was Jordan Grand Prix, was going quite well despite my nerves sending my stutter into overdrive! I sounded like one of their cars

Question:

"So Nick, there's a refresh rate problem on a monitor and the system starts up with a black screen. What do you do?"

"Er, I'd boot from a dos based bootdisk and use the limited registry editor and manually drop the refresh rate or resolution to suit"

"Ok Nick, that's fine. Is there another way you could do it?"

"Erm, can't think off the top of my head I'm afraid."

"How about Safe mode?"

"Ah, yeah, that'd work too....."

It's usually the simple things that elude me at the more inconvenient times :|

 

[nath]

Hah, I had exactly the same thing in an interview, more or less.

"So a server is coming up with error messages, what would be the first thing to check"

"urm.." It was a while ago but I think I listed a couple of things

"Ok, that's all good, but do you know about Event Viewer?"

"OHHHHHH YES, yes. Yes I know event viewer. Administrative tools. Yes, honestly, I do know about it.!"

Shit :\

Got the job anyway though

 

[dysfunction]

Once when I went for an interview they suddenly asked me to take a quick written test...

God knows why but I went into panic mode and failed the test. I didnt get the job

 

[Helme]

I'd say it's better to be refused a job because you are overqualified rather than they refuse to hire you unless you are, because apparently you totally need a 4 year university degree with 5 years work experience to fix windows errors in a local computer shop.

 

[dysfunction]

yes that goes without saying.

When I got here in the UK, Quite a few jobs I went for said we like your CV etc etc blah blah blah but you have no UK experience! WTF! Well if you gave me a job I would then have UK experience you twat!

 

[ford prefect]

My partner has a Batchelors and a Masters degree. She is highly intelligent, very capable and gets on with just about everyone she meets. She has been a wheelchair user since she was six years old. It took her five years to get a job after she finished Uni.

The job she finally found and is currently in is, typically, is a disability related job, which frankly she could do while she was half asleep (it pays under 21k per year). Recently she applied for another job doing more or less the same thing at a local university (the one she attended as happens). She didn't even get a job interview, the feedback she got said that she didn't show evidence on her application form that she understood the Social Model of Disability. Strange really as she stated on the very same form that she delivers training on the SMD twice a month and has written the course herself which is in the process of being acredited.

The past 14 jobs she has applied for, nine told her she was over qualified (all positions stating degree required), it seems all to often to be to be a fairly convenient excuse to follow your companies policy to advertise publicily and then appoint internally from my experince.

 

[Chilly]

sue the nuts off the companies if she is genuinely being discriminated against. It's 100% illegal unless the job required an able bodied applicant (shelf stacker as a random example).

Or threaten them with writing to newspapers with her experiences etc, the companies would rather pay her to stay at home than have that kind of PR fucking their brands over.

 

[soze]

I ripped alot of my CV out when my old HR Manager helped with it. She said from a HR perspective what was important and also that flashy fonts ect often do not help.

But took a job below the one i left at the place i work now and i was just honest in the interview and said i liked it better when i was doing this kind of work so thats what im looking for.

 

[Hawkwind]

Never not given someone a job for being over qualified but I can see how some managers might react to that situation. If your building a team you look for diversity and experience. To have one guy come into a team with qualifications and experience way an above everyone else could upset the balance. It's a piss poor excuse for the manager to make and reflects more on him than the applicant imho.

 

[ford prefect]

sue the nuts off the companies if she is genuinely being discriminated against. It's 100% illegal unless the job required an able bodied applicant (shelf stacker as a random example).

Or threaten them with writing to newspapers with her experiences etc, the companies would rather pay her to stay at home than have that kind of PR fucking their brands over.

It is only illegal under the Disability Disrimination Act, which although drafted with the best intentions, is used to basically come up with other excuses not to give someone with a disability a job - over qualified, inexperienced, too experienced ect.

About two years ago as an example she applied for a job at Motability, which is based in central london. They have a guarunteed interview scheme, so she went down to London for the inerview. The room they arranged in the hotel accross the road from their offices was not accessible or adapted in anyway. She was taken on a tour of their offices, and the one thing that she noted was that not one member of staff (and this is a truly huge organisation backed by the major six banks) had an obvious disability.

On another occasion she applied for a job at a local council, again guarunteed interview scheme and she was interviewd at an alternative venue, which, turned out to be because the job was in a none adapted office, on the third floor without an elevator, and the building in question was a listed building, so no changes could be made. The DDA states that organisations must make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, but it doesn't actually define what is and isn't reasonable, so that is entirely open to interpretation.