What To Do When You're Called "Overqualified"

There’s a dirty little secret in job-hunting, and if you’re a job-seeker with several years of experience — or worse, in middle management — you may have been exposed to it as Douglas has. What is it? It’s the label hiring managers put on mid-career job-seekers who appear to have one of three flaws: too many years of experience, too much education, and/or too highly paid in current or previous job. Yes, it’s the label many job-seekers fear: being overqualified. Overqualified is code for “will not fit the current position” — and be forewarned that it is a difficult label to overcome.

What can you do to overcome this unfair label? Unlike other job-hunting problems or negatives, if you feel you are going to be labeled as overqualified, you must be proactive. You will probably need to develop an entirely new job-search strategy- - changing the way you write your resumes and cover letters as well as how you sell yourself in job interviews.

Here are just some of the tactics you’ll need to use in implementing this strategy:

1. Let your network speak for you. Nothing you could say about yourself is stronger than a recommendation from someone who knows you and can recommend you. The ideal scenario is for you to use your network to find someone within the organization and let that person make the first pitch for you.
2. Focus more on skills and accomplishments than job titles. Use the employer’s own words — from the job description — to show how your skills match perfectly while at the same time downplaying skills not required for this job.
3. Take salary off the table. Make it clear from the beginning that you are completely flexible about salary — and that your previous salary is of no relevance to your current job search.
4. Reveal financial advantages of hiring you. If salary looks to be a concern, use specific examples from your past experiences to show how you increased revenue generation and/or cut costs/realized increased savings.
5. Emphasize teamwork and personality. Demonstrate that you are a team player — that the success of the team is more important than any of the individual team members.

Read more — including five more tactics you can use — in my article, Fighting the Overqualified Label: 10 Tactics for a Successful Job-Search.