Accomplishment is overrated

This has to be the most frustrating employment rejection any employer ever invented. It flies in the face of everything common sense and HR consultants tell you:

“Go to school!”

“Put your best foot forward!”

“Showcase your skills and abilities”

“Let the employer know you don’t mind taking a modest position!”

“Get more training!”

“Upgrade your credentials!”

Start down that road that and the employer will tell you:

“Sorry, you’re overqualified.”

There is a common assumption that “overqualified” is a euphemism for “too old”. There might be a grain of truth to that. After all, it takes a long time to get overqualified.

But I found out that overqualified isn’t just about being old. It’s something else completely.

When I began hearing that I could not perform a job because I was overqualified, I started asking questions.

In order to be overqualified, you have to be qualified first. So, at what point past qualified did I become overqualified?

Am I overqualified and unfit for employment because of my education? My experience? My stand-alone accomplishments? Something else?

I want to know where I went wrong.

Exactly when did I become overqualified?

Should I have quit that last job after a year so I wouldn’t build up too much experience? Did I work too hard keeping my GPA high, or mess up by going to school at night for two years to earn that MBA? Should I not have posted those articles about the economy that got so much attention, or declined that invitation to present my research paper at an academic conference?

Employers and hiring managers don’t like these questions at all. They became visibly uncomfortable, sometimes fidgeting in their seats and other times giving me the bums rush to the door. Several got angry.

They weren’t trying to conceal anything. They really had no idea what being “overqualified” was all about.

Occasionally I was able to coax a conversation out of them.

I gained a glimmer of insight when a hiring manager for a mid-sized IT company told me that if hired I would make my peers “uncomfortable”.

I was immediately offended.

I’m a nice guy! People generally like me! How would I make my peers uncomfortable?

“No”, she told me, “it’s not that you aren’t a nice guy, it’s the baggage you carry”.

Baggage? What baggage?

She was making it sound like I had a prison record or long string of dismissals from other companies.

She pulled out my resume and started reciting the things I had included at the behest of a resume coach who told me I needed to “put my best foot forward”.

Hiring someone with these qualifications, she told me, would make others at my pay grade think they were not qualified and on the verge of being fired. They’d quit to look for another job before that happened.

That made an impression on me.

Years earlier in one of my first jobs after college I was a clerk in an engineering firm that contracted with the state to build and repair roads. My peers were mostly women who did clerical jobs like answering phones, filing papers and taking messages for the engineers who worked on the next floor up.

I had a terrible time figuring out how to transfer a phone call. My peers thought I was an idiot and were less than helpful.

On the other hand, the engineers soon found out that I could read topographic maps.

That might not sound like much, but it was a big deal to the engineers who became frustrated with the inability of their support staff to find a particular place on a map.

I casually mentioned to the engineer in charge of environmental compliance that I had been an intern at the Oregon Legislature and worked for a group of legislators interested in environmental issues.

Suddenly I was spending my mornings struggling with the phones and my afternoons happily huddled over topo maps with the engineers redlining areas that were environmentally sensitive.

The office manager fired me shortly after that. But the engineers sent me letters of recommendation and notes of commiseration and encouragement.

It wasn’t until I completed a few graduate level I/O psychology courses that I began to understand the burden of over qualification.

It wasn’t a matter of skills and education, but something more subtle and nuanced.

This came home to me like a sledgehammer to the forehead one day while I was talking to a peer in a foster care agency.

Here’s what she said:

“Mike”, (the owner and our boss), “really knows a lot, but you know a lot more, so from now on I’m listening to you”.

I was shocked! I wanted to say “No! No! Don’t listen to me!”, but just sat there with my mouth agog, letting it sink in.

Just by being present, I was undermining the authority of the boss. It wasn’t my intent. I didn’t even realize it.

Other people did though. To them it was a red flag.

I knew that I would never be able to work in a traditional organization and dedicated myself to creating a new way of making a living. This happened to be about the time the industrial economy imploded, so the timing could not have been better.

I turned into a gig worker. Ghost writing theses and dissertations for wealthy but illiterate graduate students. Laying carpet for a widow desperately trying to hold onto her condo rental. Uploading articles about economics or the labor market to Medium or Data Based Investor. Driving a bus.

That’s where “putting your best foot forward” gets you when you’re “overqualified”.