Leadership, Business, Technology
What If You Are Overqualified
Overqualification is a thing nowadays, but it is possible to overcome it
This story reflects the rejection of a talented person from several workplaces due to an unusual excuse. The good news is there’s a coping mechanism that exists.
Henry is a talented software engineer with multiple degrees.
His recent degrees were a doctorate in law and anthropology. His first degree was in computer science. He achieved a postgraduate diploma in Information Technology.
Henry also completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. Henry gained 30-plus industry and vendor certifications in Information Technology, Information Management, Data Science, Technical Design, Open Source Architecture, and various programming languages.
Henry’s achievements in software engineering were above and beyond. He authored several peer-reviewed papers published in high-impact journals. He co-authored two books on Data Science and Data Analytics. He also designed an interesting iPhone iOS application on his own time and monetized it through his website. The app generated lucrative passive income for him.
After working 14 years in a large business organization as a software engineer, he was retrenched from his full-time job because of downsizing. His employer adored him as he was loyal and productive.
Despite the strategic focus on talent retention, business organizations sometimes have to make tough decisions in a bad economic climate. COVID-19 is a prime example that affected many companies to downsize.
Since he has three young children and his wife was unemployed, parenting the kids, Henry needed to find a job urgently. His passive income from his Apple smartphone app was insufficient to feed the family.
Considering his experience, education, and industry certifications, he thought finding a job would be easy. Henry was keen to find one and started the process.
He applied to many positions he found on LinkedIn and several other online job application sites. His profile illustrated his endorsed skills, qualifications, and work experience.
He looked at his list and noticed 27 job applications sent from his LinkedIn profile. To his surprise, after a few weeks, he received no response to his applications.
Henry decided to reach out to the contacts in the position descriptions. He politely asked them about the progress. He received some responses to his surprise. All responses were depicted as rejection.
They all responded similarly: “Due to a large number of qualified applicants, we regret to inform you that your application was unsuccessful for this position. Please feel free to apply for future positions in our company”.
Henry was confused and disappointed by this situation. He wanted to obtain feedback by responding to the rejection letters. These rejections made him curious about what was wrong with his application. He again kindly asked for further feedback on why his CV did not generate interviews.
Fortunately, some of the employers responded. There was a pattern in the responses. All responses used the term “overqualification”.
As a confident person, he reached out to employers for honest feedback and guidance. He wanted to understand what overqualified meant. He invested a lot of time in his education, skill acquisition, and experience gained. Being overqualified did not make sense to him.
The findings from his inquiry were interesting. They all boiled down to a single item. Henry had multiple qualifications and industry certificates, so the employers thought he was overqualified and would not be an excellent match. The perception was his qualifications would stick out in the team as no one in the software engineering team had a master's, let alone a double doctorate.
Even though Henry had the required knowledge, skills, capability, and experience and exceeded the criteria, he failed to secure a job. Henry saw this as an irony, but he was competent to overcome this challenge.
He started re-applying for different positions.
This time he removed all his degrees except for computer science and added only a few industry certifications. Out of ten applications, he was invited to ten interviews.
He did not mention his additional qualifications during the interviews.
Out of ten interviews, he got six job offers.
He got the optimal position with the negotiation skills he learned from his MBA. He told me he was compensated at least two times better than his previous job.
The moral of this story is there is a thing called “overqualification.” But smart people have a coping mechanism for this unusual situation. Only show the essential qualifications because more can hurt. So, keep in mind that overqualification is a thing nowadays.
Reference: Digital Intelligence
Disclaimer: Please note that this post does not include professional advice. I documented my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives only to provide information.
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