Too Much Experience Hurts You in Today’s Tough Job Market
Overqualified job applicants are scaring off cost-conscious businesses.
Belt-tightening is overused corporate jargon, but it is particularly apt at the moment. The midsection of America’s workforce is getting squeezed.
Not accomplished enough for senior leadership roles but too experienced (and expensive) for the front-line positions artificial intelligence hasn’t replaced, many mid-career professionals suddenly find themselves in no-man’s-land.
Amazon this week laid off 14,000 office workers in a step toward cutting as many as 30,000 desk jobs. Phrases like “reducing bureaucracy” and “removing layers” appeared in a memo to employees, so it is not difficult to guess which kinds of roles are likely to be eliminated.
Target, United Parcel Service and Booz Allen Hamilton are just a few of the other major employers to announce white-collar staff reductions recently.
This marks what could be a major turning point for the U.S. workforce. Gone are the days when employers would hoard talented employees or worry about being understaffed for the good times.
Now, cost-conscious businesses are trying to get flat, aiming to boost productivity. And when companies need to fill openings, they are eager to find people with just enough know-how—and no more.
This explains why I keep hearing from job seekers who say they’ve been rejected for being overqualified.
When a job description calls for 10 to 15 years of experience, 25-year veterans aren’t necessarily seen as better-than-expected prospects. They’re often viewed as applicants who will ask for too much money and leave as soon as they find opportunities commensurate with their long CVs.
“This is a discouraging thing for me to say, but with the job market the way it is, employers can be very picky,” says Rachel Kargas, a recruiter in the Denver area. “There are so many applicants for every opening that they can find exactly what they want, and that might be a young person.”
Sell yourself short
Employers’ concerns about overqualified job applicants are understandable but can be unwarranted. Some people want less responsibility than in previous roles and are willing to take pay cuts accordingly. Others have been out of work for months and have no desire to job hop once they finally get hired.
To explain these motives, overqualified job seekers have to land interviews. Many don’t make it that far.
Anthony Nigbur, 41, has been a program manager for cybersecurity and healthcare companies. He’s been job hunting since a contract position ended in May, and is working with a recruiter who put him up for several openings.
“He has told me that some of the feedback he’s gotten about me is, ‘Hey, this guy looks great, he’s got all this experience, but we don’t necessarily need it or know how to use him,’” says Nigbur, who lives in Indiana.
He wishes he could talk to prospective employers about why he would be willing to take a job that seems beneath him on paper. He’s stepped into the lead parenting role in recent months while his wife, a nurse, has upped her hours and travel.
“A lot of people are looking for salary, but not everybody’s looking for that,” he says. “Sometimes it’s work-life balance.”
The way companies have hollowed middle management is so dramatic that a new study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects a shortage of 2.9 million managers in 2032.
By then, middle management will be a hot job again, the study predicts. That doesn’t do people like Nigbur much good today.
Veteran sales manager Anne Marie Sterling found that playing down her experience was a key to landing her current job at a solar-energy company. The 55-year-old Florida resident tells me she had to “play dumb.”
“That happens a lot in job interviews. There’s no doubt about it,” she says.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean coming across as unintelligent. In Sterling’s case, it meant balancing her decades of sales experience with the fact that she had never worked in the solar industry. The idea was to put to rest any worry that she might parade in like a know-it-all.
How to break through
Kristen Fife, a recruiter in the Seattle area, used a similar strategy to place a software engineer in his 50s on a team of 20-somethings and 30-somethings. She got the hiring manager on board by stressing that this seemingly overqualified candidate was new to developing mobile applications.
Most job seekers don’t have someone like Fife to go to bat for them—not until they get through an initial screening, anyway. To reduce the odds of getting tossed out immediately, applicants should submit résumés that meet, but don’t vastly exceed, the listed requirements.
“Pull years of experience off,” she says. “Your résumé needs to clearly show your qualifications for the job, and it needs to show your experience over the last five to seven—no more than 10—years.”
Removing graduation years from the education section of your résumé is another way to fuzz up your career length.
This isn’t all about trying to appear younger, though it’s true that the “overqualified” label can be veiled age discrimination. Recruiters and hiring managers consistently tell me they are looking for depth, not length, on candidates’ résumés.
By the way, they also confess to occasionally fibbing about “overqualificiations” to spare job applicants’ egos. So, try to be honest with yourself.
Did you really miss out on that opportunity because you were too good or is it possible that the recruiter softened the blow with the professional version of a lame breakup line?
If you’re convinced that being overqualified is the problem, consider ditching the one-line summary of every job you’ve ever had. You might have better luck with detailed descriptions of the impact you made in only your most recent roles.
Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com
Belt-tightening is overused corporate jargon, but it is particularly apt at the moment. The midsection of America’s workforce is getting squeezed.
Not accomplished enough for senior leadership roles but too experienced (and expensive) for the front-line positions artificial intelligence hasn’t replaced, many mid-career professionals suddenly find themselves in no-man’s-land.
Amazon this week laid off 14,000 office workers in a step toward cutting as many as 30,000 desk jobs. Phrases like “reducing bureaucracy” and “removing layers” appeared in a memo to employees, so it is not difficult to guess which kinds of roles are likely to be eliminated.
Target, United Parcel Service and Booz Allen Hamilton are just a few of the other major employers to announce white-collar staff reductions recently.
This marks what could be a major turning point for the U.S. workforce. Gone are the days when employers would hoard talented employees or worry about being understaffed for the good times.
Now, cost-conscious businesses are trying to get flat, aiming to boost productivity. And when companies need to fill openings, they are eager to find people with just enough know-how—and no more.
This explains why I keep hearing from job seekers who say they’ve been rejected for being overqualified.
When a job description calls for 10 to 15 years of experience, 25-year veterans aren’t necessarily seen as better-than-expected prospects. They’re often viewed as applicants who will ask for too much money and leave as soon as they find opportunities commensurate with their long CVs.
“This is a discouraging thing for me to say, but with the job market the way it is, employers can be very picky,” says Rachel Kargas, a recruiter in the Denver area. “There are so many applicants for every opening that they can find exactly what they want, and that might be a young person.”
Sell yourself short
Employers’ concerns about overqualified job applicants are understandable but can be unwarranted. Some people want less responsibility than in previous roles and are willing to take pay cuts accordingly. Others have been out of work for months and have no desire to job hop once they finally get hired.
To explain these motives, overqualified job seekers have to land interviews. Many don’t make it that far.
Anthony Nigbur, 41, has been a program manager for cybersecurity and healthcare companies. He’s been job hunting since a contract position ended in May, and is working with a recruiter who put him up for several openings.
“He has told me that some of the feedback he’s gotten about me is, ‘Hey, this guy looks great, he’s got all this experience, but we don’t necessarily need it or know how to use him,’” says Nigbur, who lives in Indiana.
He wishes he could talk to prospective employers about why he would be willing to take a job that seems beneath him on paper. He’s stepped into the lead parenting role in recent months while his wife, a nurse, has upped her hours and travel.
“A lot of people are looking for salary, but not everybody’s looking for that,” he says. “Sometimes it’s work-life balance.”
The way companies have hollowed middle management is so dramatic that a new study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects a shortage of 2.9 million managers in 2032.
By then, middle management will be a hot job again, the study predicts. That doesn’t do people like Nigbur much good today.
Veteran sales manager Anne Marie Sterling found that playing down her experience was a key to landing her current job at a solar-energy company. The 55-year-old Florida resident tells me she had to “play dumb.”
“That happens a lot in job interviews. There’s no doubt about it,” she says.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean coming across as unintelligent. In Sterling’s case, it meant balancing her decades of sales experience with the fact that she had never worked in the solar industry. The idea was to put to rest any worry that she might parade in like a know-it-all.
How to break through
Kristen Fife, a recruiter in the Seattle area, used a similar strategy to place a software engineer in his 50s on a team of 20-somethings and 30-somethings. She got the hiring manager on board by stressing that this seemingly overqualified candidate was new to developing mobile applications.
Most job seekers don’t have someone like Fife to go to bat for them—not until they get through an initial screening, anyway. To reduce the odds of getting tossed out immediately, applicants should submit résumés that meet, but don’t vastly exceed, the listed requirements.
“Pull years of experience off,” she says. “Your résumé needs to clearly show your qualifications for the job, and it needs to show your experience over the last five to seven—no more than 10—years.”
Removing graduation years from the education section of your résumé is another way to fuzz up your career length.
This isn’t all about trying to appear younger, though it’s true that the “overqualified” label can be veiled age discrimination. Recruiters and hiring managers consistently tell me they are looking for depth, not length, on candidates’ résumés.
By the way, they also confess to occasionally fibbing about “overqualificiations” to spare job applicants’ egos. So, try to be honest with yourself.
Did you really miss out on that opportunity because you were too good or is it possible that the recruiter softened the blow with the professional version of a lame breakup line?
If you’re convinced that being overqualified is the problem, consider ditching the one-line summary of every job you’ve ever had. You might have better luck with detailed descriptions of the impact you made in only your most recent roles.
Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com
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