Talk about myopic. I know full well what you’re point is, I even said I used to agree with it, until I worked the other side of the equation. You’re the one ignoring my point. People doing hiring aren’t looking for the awesome guy (overqualified) that will bail in 3 months when he finds something better, they’re looking for the really good guy that will stay for years. And anytime you’ve lied on your resume just to get a job at all until you could find something that was a better long term fit you proved them right.
I understand the facts from both sides. I’ve been laid off, and I’ve hired (and of course that means not hired) people. I know how bad it sucks to be out of work and watching the money evaporating. And that eats my gut every time I have to pass on people during the hiring process. It sucks, I WANT to hire every half way decent resume, but I can’t. I’m trying to fill 1 or 2 positions out of 50+ resumes at least half of which I can make a good case will be able to do the job well, I have to chop those 25 good guys down to 5 or less to interview, and then reject 3 or 4 of them. It sucks. Culling days are the worst days at work. But that’s part of the job. Learning you can’t hire them all, you can’t even hire most. And the biggest thing to learn is you do the most good by hiring the best fit, because now you’re giving somebody a job they’ll enjoy for years.
Your “best guess” is 100% wrong. Been young and out of work plenty. Learned from it. Learned enough from it to wind up on the other side of the equation, learned A LOT from that.
What would have happened if you’d gotten that HVAC job? Would you have continued to look for work? How much longer was it between when they rejected you and you got a job that fit your actual skill set? If your answers are “yes” and “less than a year” that’s why they didn’t hire you.
Looking for people is an expensive proposition, even if there’s no training involved there’s still the expense of screening applicants. When I was in McDonalds in the 80s the OMT manual said hiring and training process cost 3 grand, that’s for a freaking burger flipper 30 years ago. For something outside minimum wage land where the people screening applicants, training the new hire, and the new hire themselves are getting paid actual money you’re talking about sinking 10s of thousands of dollars into the process. It’s survival negative to sink that kind of money into somebody that won’t stop looking for a new job just because you hired him. You want people that are going to stick, overqualified candidates won’t stick, that’s why you don’t hire them.
I’ve never forgotten where I came from, but I’ve also never forgotten the goal of the process. Because in the long run fulfilling the goal does the most good for the most people. Go throwing money around on overqualified candidates that won’t stay and in short order the company is out of money and then EVERYBODY is looking for a job. Short sighted thinking is what got the economy in this shape. There’s a reason why the shortest tenure any of my hires have ever had was 3 years, I keep my eye on the long term. And yeah I’ve passed up a lot of really good candidates that would have been gone 6 months later because of it, and I’m sure their short term life was made harder because I passed them up, and it sucked, and I drank to make it suck less, but my decision was the right one for everybody.
I will lie to eat.
The next job when I was unemployed in the early 80's was a draftsman job at a Civil Engineering group. I lied on my resume, took off my college degree and had a buddy act as my reference. Got the job and was grateful to be making a third of my previous job. I was over qualified but I was eating and that is the most important thing. I stayed there 6 months and bar-tended at night. Finally a better job came along.
Like I said if it is between me living on the street and a job I will get the job, hook or crook.
PS when I worked those dumb-ass jobs to survive NOBODY had to spend a dime training me and I was productive from minute one.
We all have to survive, I can go back into the survival mode at anytime.
Yeah I'm sure you lost sleep. /sarc