After they told me I was overqualified I would just tell them I wouldn’t work as hard.
“Catherine Conlan, Monster Contributing Writer”
So Cate isn’t a morning person. That’s no reason to call her a monster.
Funny, I had an interview yesterday for an energy service company that needs to build up their project management capacity. The interviewer flat out said it looked like I’m overqualified! Huh - as a contractor not an employee - he want to hire less than the best people for the job? It’s not like I’d be gunning for his job. What an idiot IMHO.
Knock the resume to no more than 15 years experience, take off older technologies and techniques, and understate your accomplishments.
P.S. That includes NOT stating the year of any degrees or credentials.
Go in “black face” or cross-dress? /sarc
You have to cater the resume to the job. There is NO overqualified if you follow the exact way the job announcement is written. I have always done that. In fact, after I was hired, I was talking to my Boss about research I had done for an MBA. He said, “What MBA?”....I said oops. I didn’t add that because you didn’t require it. He LITERALLY told me it was a good thing I didn’t add it or you would not have the job you have now.
Is “overqualified” just HR-speak for “too old”? If so, a little Grecian Formula might help.
Was this written by Obama? : )
Unless it's a "specialty position", everything else is of secondary importance these days!
Temp in your desired industry. If you’re competent, you’ll get hired.
In the cover letter say you are transgender and that you noticed they don’t have enough or any transgender employees, which leaves them vulnerable to a lawsuit.
After getting hired, tell them you decided you were actually straight after all.
“How to pretend my company is worth something while LinkedIn kicks our behind”
I didn’t believe it but I do now.
75% of all jobs found use info from LinkedIn.
Years ago a friend of mine found work by listing his PhD in Aerospace Engineering as a hobby.
With over 25 years of experience in corporate finance; including the areas of general accounting, payroll and accounts payable, and in benefits administration and having management experience, I suspect that many of the companies I applied to for job that I was qualified for, were not interested in me because they could get someone with a BA or even an MBA (neither of which I have) for the same salary, even if they didn’t have my breadth of experience or proven accomplishments. Or in the case of the lower level positions I applied for, like say an AP or PR clerk, they saw me as being way overqualified – which I was.
So I did do something that the article recommends against and that was to tailor my resume based on the job. But I didn’t lie about or omit any jobs or any of my actual job titles rather I emphasized my strengths and experience based on what they were looking for. In other words if I was applying for an AP Clerk II job, while didn’t omit the fact that I had payroll and payroll management experience, I put more emphasis on the accounts payable aspects of the jobs I had that encompassed that and what they were looking for.
But you have to be honest. If you put on your resume that you were an AP Clerk at XYZ company and they conditionally offer you the job but then find out during the background check/employment verification that you were actually a Senior Staff Accountant/Payroll Manager at XYZ company, or you tell them you were making 25k a year when you were actually making 50k, your offer is likely to be rescinded, just as it would if you lied about having a degree, and you wouldn’t believe how often that happens. And you have to be aware of any of your personal professional references; if you omit things or greatly sell yourself short and your references tell a different story, even if they are singing your praises, the HR department and the hiring manager are going to question what else you haven’t been honest about and why.
I did finally land a full time job after working at Target for a couple of months (and Target BTW, hired me as a “seasonal” worker, but was so happy with me that they wanted me to stay on, go fulltime and go on the “management” track – and I did have prior retail management experience but that was some 25 years earlier). The full time job I finally landed was, while not entry level (COBRA Administration/Customer Service), it was a big step down in terms of responsibility and opportunities and salary and with a small regional “mom & pop” family owned and run business, not that there is anything wrong with that – but this was the kind of company that if you weren’t related by blood or marriage to the owners or one of the other higher ups, you were very limited and basically treated like crap. But I stuck it out for over two years and was even promoted but in all honesty, I wasn’t happy there and for even more reasons to get into here.
So when I found an opportunity to double my then current salary (but in actuality, get back to what I used to make) at a company much closer to home and with much better benefits and opportunities for professional growth, but more importantly in an area that I really love; Payroll and HR Information Systems management, I took it. And I love my job, the company I work for and the people I work with and the interesting challenges of my job. And I recently got a big promotion and salary increase. I even have done some travel as we are part of a much bigger international company, even to the HQ of our parent company in the UK : ),
In my current job I am part of the HR team as opposed being part of the Finance Department as many of my previous jobs were. So I’m learning much more about the HR side of things and part of my promotion entails “Compensation Administration”, meaning I’m learning how to “slot” and “grade” new and existing positions and will eventually take on the role of salary negotiation.
HR often gets a bad rap, and admittedly sometimes deservedly so in some companies, but they are often stuck between the unrealistic expectations of the hiring managers, the realities of the job market and sadly all too often the dishonesty of job applicants, especially at the mid to higher job levels.
A good example of this was a job we were recently trying to fill for a manufacturing engineer with experience in polymer plastics. The job description and prerequisite qualifications, the education and experience level were written up by the hiring manager and his manager and approved by senior management and HR and the job was slotted for salary by HR based on that job description with comparable industry and regional comps and HR posted the job and sent it out to our recruiters. But when the resumes came in and the interviews took place, they were all rejected. Why? Because none of them had a Ph.D.
Well they way the job description was written, a Ph.D. was not necessary or even “desired” and for where the salary level was slotted and what the hiring department management had budgeted for the position, there was no way they were going to get a Ph.D. to take the job for that amount, live alone want to even do the job given that it would be far below what someone with a Ph.D. would probably want. And if someone with a Ph.D. did accept it, the question would be why; why were they willing to take a lower position in terms of the job and salary and just how long could we expect to keep this person if there wasn’t a fast track for advancement, which there wasn’t. And given that the job as written, offered a relocation package and sign on bonus, if the person stayed the minimum of two years, we would not recoup the hiring costs. Needless to say our HR manager and our recruiters were pi$$ed as it took up a lot of their time and for nothing, not to mention the waste of time of those applicants who met the qualifications for the job and who came in to interview, some more than once, in some cases from out of state at the company’s expense.
My HR manager had to have what I would call a “Come To Jesus” meeting with management and spelled out to them in clear and certain terms that they either had to re-write the job description and be willing to pay more, much more or keep it as it was and accept that they were not going to get a Ph.D. level engineer. It took over six months to finally fill the position when our industry standard to fill a similar position is 45-60 days. Ug!
OTOH, we have been trying to fill a warehouse manager position for many months and two of the candidates we made conditional job offers to didn’t pass their background checks as both of them had lied about having a college degree, a BA and sadly having a BA wasn’t even a prerequisite of the job. If they hadn’t falsified their application, agreeing to have that verified, either of the two would have been hired. The second applicant didn’t list her degree on her resume but she did on her application. And when we couldn’t verify it, she sent us a photocopy that was so obviously doctored – her supposed graduation date on her application didn’t even match the photocopy of what she sent us and based on the result of her background check and DOB, she would have gotten her BA when she was twelve years old.
Just tell them you’re gay.