- Alexander Christian
- BBC working life
4 hours ago
Credit, Getty Images
When Emily wanted to pursue her dream career, she thought the best option would be to apply for an entrylevel management position and work your way up to promotion.
There was a vacancy with a major entertainment company in London and her five years’ stint with other multinationals meant she fitted the bill.
The strategy seemed to be working. The company’s human resources department contacted Emily within days. But there was good news and bad news.
“They said my resume was impressive and that I was an exceptional candidate,” she says. “But in the interview, they told me I was too qualified that I would get bored quickly in a job with my experience.”
In return, the company promised Emily a new job. But in the end it didn’t work out. Emily then got stuck in a job she wanted out of, and still ended up in an impasse: she was too qualified for an entrylevel position in the profession she wanted, and she didn’t have enough experience to apply for a job Position corresponding to their own.
Emily identified only by her first name for security reasons was frustrated by this whole process.
“I would have preferred to take the original ad,” she says. “Maybe I would have found the job easily, but nothing would have stopped the company from promoting me if they thought I was good. Hearing first that I was ‘too good’ was flattering. But when I realized I didn’t get the job, I felt betrayed.”
At first glance, being overqualified for a job seems like a good thing. A candidate with more experience would logically be placed at the top of the CV stack. And it seems like a stroke of luck for an employer to hire an employee who exceeds the job requirements.
But that’s not how it usually works. In fact, overqualification can sometimes be a reason for being fired from companies. Perhaps against their own intuition, employers often reject candidates based on too much knowledge and experience even when it is difficult to find available talent in the market.
“Good is not necessarily good”
As careers progress, workers tend to take on more important positions and gradually build their way into managerial or managerial positions. But the higher employees fly, the fewer work alternatives are available to them.
“You’re heading towards the top of the pyramid,” said Terry GreerKing, vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Londonbased cybersecurity firm SonicWall. “The more experience they gain, the smaller their opportunities become. To try anything else, you would have to go back to the bottom of the pyramid.”
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Employers should want to hire the most qualified and experienced candidates—but that’s not always the case.
Sometimes employees want to step back in order to move forward. It could be for a career change, as in Emily’s case, or because a veteran worker struggling to climb the next rung of the ladder decides to move sideways or down to forecast future profit.
Personal circumstances can also influence this problem. A transfer or return to work after a career break may result in a worker accepting a lower position.
But while these circumstances may seem like good reasons for applicants, it can be a red flag for recruiters when workers apply for positions that appear to be “below” their current career level.
For GreerKing, an overqualified candidate’s resume may indicate that they frequently change jobs or are stagnant, which raises suspicion.
“You have to be paranoid to hire someone,” he says. “If someone moves down a level or two and has probably already achieved what the position offers, you have to ask about their motives.”
There are candidates who can successfully explain their motives and convince companies that they really want to back off, but others can rouse recruiters’ fears that a lower position will make them unhappy.
The concern is that the overqualified employee will soon feel underwhelmed, bored and afraid of the next change.
“When someone joins a company, it can take anywhere from three months to a year to be fully productive,” explains GreerKing. “Even someone who is overqualified for the position cannot come and do the job. You have to understand the culture, the processes and the technology. So it’s not the wisest time to invest in someone all the time only to have them go six months later.”
Older workers in industries where the career ladder is well established, such as in management consulting, can be particularly vulnerable to the dangers of overqualification.
“Someone can have indepth experience in one field, apply for a position in another, and end up hearing only from the recruitment team that they should apply for a higher position,” says Davis Nguyen, founder of training school My Consulting Offer. , as in the United States. “But if the company doesn’t have an open position [naquele nível]the candidate will be rejected.”
To turn down these workers, employers can claim that they have too much experience for the job. Or they sometimes report that they simply don’t fit the company perfectly.
“Employers want to hire the right person at the right time, who can grow, develop and mature in the role,” says GreerKing. “Employees often want challenges. As a result, they are happier and stay longer.”
Question of agility and flexibility
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“Someone who is ‘too good’ for the job will only benefit the company in the short term,” says Shelley Crane
Of course, some nimble employers can take advantage of these overqualified workers.
GreerKing argues that small companies, less constrained by corporate hierarchies and structures, are better able to hire overskilled workers. “The startups [empresas de tecnologia iniciantes] They are agile and flexible,” he says. “They can hire an overqualified candidate and justify that hiring with a job title and salary that matches their experience.”
According to Shelley Crane, director of UKbased staffing firm Robert Half, agile employers can also hire overqualified workers and quickly promote them to forestall boredom. In this way, companies benefit from the employee experience and maintain their motivation and longterm commitment.
“Someone who is ‘too good’ for the job will only be of shortterm benefit to the company,” she says, “unless there are excellent opportunities for internal growth.”
Firms may also be more willing to take on younger, overskilled workers. GreerKing claims his motives for a downshift are easier to justify.
“The older you are, the higher the cost of a junior position and the more likely your immediate need is financial. Hiring an older candidate would also mean not only being managed by someone with less experience, but also being managed by someone younger than he is which can create structural problems,” he explains.
Right now, the hiring crisis in some parts of the world means employers can’t be as selective about overqualified workers. GreerKing recognizes that it is more difficult to weed out overexperienced candidates when the competition for talent is at its most intense.
However, according to Crane, companies are more focused on retaining current employees and overqualified candidates are still being fired. “In today’s market, finding someone new can be expensive and timeconsuming,” she says. “When overqualified employees leave the company, the company usually goes back to where it started.”
“Catastrophic Effect”
Workers seeking change may be tempted to intentionally reduce their knowledge or omit experience from their resumes, but Shelley Crane discourages this practice. Since the candidate’s work history is likely to be discussed at the interview, any dishonesty can be uncovered later in the process.
“It’s never a good idea to dry your resume,” she says. Crane also generally advises professionals not to apply for jobs for which they are overqualified: “Someone who applies for multiple jobs below their level of expertise and is rejected can have a disastrous effect on their confidence.”
“You gave me a choice”
Patience and a determined job hunt can pay off, but the reality is that there are experienced candidates who may not succeed and it’s not their fault. This can happen to senior executives, especially those who have worked at the same company for a long time.
“Maybe they’ve rooted themselves in the culture of another work environment,” says Terry GreerKing. “It makes them less malleable.”
But the inconveniences of being overqualified can hurt anyone, as was the case with Emily. Although she never quite achieved her ideal position, she eventually turned to the career she wanted and landed a job at a smaller entertainment company, which turned out to be a promotion from her previous job.
But the experience of being seen as too qualified for her dream job made her question why a company would prefer to isolate a good worker like her, who likes to start at the bottom and is willing to add value to the company.
“I applied for the position because I really believed I had a lot to offer this company,” she says. “It was my choice. Saying I was overqualified took that choice away from me.”
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