Valentina Janek, who’s over 40, has heard the “you’re-over-qualified” excuse before.
Janek, who started a networking group for the jobless called the Long Island Breakfast Club, has been looking for a job for a while and believes age bias is alive and well in the job market today.
“Overqualified is another word for disqualified,” she explained. “If you interview with someone not as experienced as you, you won’t get the job.”
It’s something I hear often from people in the mid-stream of their careers, and even though employment discrimination based on age is clearly illegal under the nation’s labor laws, it happens often.
What are these hiring managers and HR folks really thinking when they say “overqualified”?
Carl Wellenstein, and employment strategist and author of “12 Steps to a New Career” thinks he knows.
“They are thinking you are either too old (for them) or you’ll only stay until you find a job more suited to your level of experience,” he explained.
They find ways to justify this, according to Wellenstein.
• They have a very young group of employees in the department/group/etc. you would be in and they believe it would be difficult for an older person to adapt. Or, they may believe the current employees may not easily accept an older person coming in and it could cause friction and adversely affect productivity.
• They may have a high percentage of employees in a department who will be approaching retirement at the same time and they must recruit younger, less experienced people who can learn and grow to fill that vacuum.
• Their customer base is young or their market targets a particular culture and they believe they need to recruit people who could more easily connect with their market.
No matter what the reasoning, you still can’t discriminate against an older worker. But there may be ways to get hiring managers to think less about age and more about what you can do for them.
Wellenstein offered some advice on how to mitigate some of the age bias:
“Don’t talk about how fit you are, how well you keep in shape, or try to convince them that you won’t consider other jobs that might be more appropriate for you,” he advised. “You must focus on what you bring to the table and how it will benefit them.”
He provided some ideas of what to say:
• “I’ve held a similar position with ABC Company and have had to deal with many, if not most, of the issues that someone in this position will encounter.”
• “Using my prior experience, I can anticipate the issues and prevent them from becoming problems that then have to be dealt with after the fact.”
• “I’ve learned the most effective techniques and what doesn’t work. That should mitigate problems and help create a more efficient organization.”
• “I’ve learned the value of building a succession plan and have the experience and knowledge of all the functions in the department. Using that to your advantage, I can organize cross-training and coach people to be more effective in what they do. I can also recognize their strengths and weaknesses more easily and identify those who should be promoted or who need more training.”
• “While I understand you think I might leave when the economy recovers, I have a history of being very loyal to my employers. I never left only because another opportunity paid more. I left for reasons out of my control (headcount reductions, etc.) or, like the majority of people who leave their employer, because of a boss that I chose not to work for anymore.” (Whatever the reason, be prepared to explain it objectively without any hint of emotion.)
• “I’ve learned throughout my career that change is constant and I’ve always been very adaptable to new systems and ways of doing things. My past experience has often helped me to improve upon suggestions made by others.”
• “I have had to work for younger people (or in teams) on a number of occasions and have often helped mentor them. Many of my former younger colleagues have become personal friends.”
What I’ve heard from some hiring managers is that confidence plays a key role in getting people hired. You have to feel confident and proud of your age and all you’ve accomplished. If not, why would they want to hire you, right?
Have you ever been told you’re overqualified, or felt your age held you back? Tell us what happened, and how you dealt with it or didn’t deal with it?
February 26th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
While I agree that there is definitely age discrimination out there especially in specific industries/positions. Overqualified IS a component. I am a 47 year old white male. In my working career I have been passed over for too young, too inexperienced and being a male instead of a female. There is one company in my industry that it is known that don’t even bother applying if you are over 40.
As the Real Estate industry collapsed I know friends young and old who when applying for positions in new fields were told “We’d love to hire you but we know as soon as Real Estate picks up, you will leave”. Guess what so will that more inexperienced worker once the general economy and better opportunities arise.
Ageism and Overqualified mix together in a serious way with insecure managers who feel you may know more than they do because of your experience and they feel threatened instead of seeing how it could enable their companies to be more efficient.
Getting “the job” is a very complex equation involving experience, corporate culture, preconceived ideas of those doing the hiring and of course CONFIDENCE.
February 27th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
It is disheartening to hear about this. I am almost 40 and decided to make a career change which is hard task in and of itself without adding age prejudice into the mix.
February 28th, 2010 at 12:36 am
Exactly how old is Mr. Wellenstein? Has he ever actually held a job or did he become a strategist out of frustration while he interjected his idealism into the face of every job interviewer?
I hired my employment strategist when I was very small. I believe it was about .50. There was a whole firm of them, seven to be exact. They simply said..'’there ain’t no trick to get rich quick, you dig, dig dig all day.'’
Truth is stranger than fiction. I would declare that if you are indeed termed ‘over-qualified’ after an interview, obviously you failed the interview. It is your fault and no one else.
Quite frankly, one absolute truth in life is that those who make no mistakes, never did anything. As always there will always be brilliant young minds whose ideology will create a better way, and there are those who have had absolutely brilliant ideas that may take an entire lifetime to actually fulfill. Therefore, I tell you that success is a true coalition between the two. You will never convince me that some old codger sitting behind a desk tickling keys has to be a good physical specimen just as you cannot convince me that a slender young person sitting behind a desk is wasting his time. The hunger in our minds quest for fulfillment coincides often with the hunger we sometimes feel in our stomach.And if you feel you need someone else to tell you how to become successful, well someday we will all have infomercials and do nothing but spend money.
A young Clint Eastwood as a young man was absolutely right..'’there are two people in the world. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig.'’
Simplify and conquer I say. If you are unemployed, it is your fault because either every person who declines to hire you is nuts or you simply cannot qualify as an individual. For those who are working and feel unfulfilled and not appreciated, fire your Boss…Quit!!
March 1st, 2010 at 11:15 am
The label “overqualified” can also be applied to younger workers who move from a larger job market to a smaller job market. It happened to me when I was in the retail sector years ago. I had many years of experience in a Chicago suburb, but when I moved to a much smaller city in another state, I often was told that I was “overqualified”.
March 1st, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Being “overqualified” also plagues young PhDs. No one wants to hire someone with an advanced degree these days, despite that my skills would readily transfer to many positions. It’s incredibly frustrating — committing that much time to that much school and now no job.
March 1st, 2010 at 2:23 pm
The article’s first block quote from Wellenstein details some excellent insights into why candidates get labeled “overqualified.” At the same time, though, the article (especially the title) oversimplifies by painting “overqualified” as just a euphemism for “too old.”
Yes, that is sometimes the case. But there are other factors in play too. As the Wellenstein quote indicates, “overqualification” is usually more related to how the hiring manager perceives a candidate’s culture fit (which everyone agrees is the single most important factor in any hiring decision).
Most important, Wellenstein’s advice to avoid getting tagged as “overqualified” is self-destructive - this is absolutely the wrong way to present yourself if your age or qualifications exceed what the hiring manager is looking for. I have seen others offer similar advice, centered around the value of extra experience, having been through it all, ability to mentor younger employees, etc. The reason it will usually backfire is explained here: Our Take: Suicidal Comeback (Nov 13, 2009) http://bit.ly/9HEi0D
Here are my suggestions for “Avoiding the ‘Overqualified’ Trap”: http://bit.ly/aIEabx
March 1st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
What do you all think this is going on? If we set ageism aside for a moment, why wouldn’t an employer want someone who’s overqualified?
Are we just afraid of people who are smart today? Look at what people say about Obama and what they said about Bush. Obama is derided for sounding smart and professorial. Bush was beloved by some because he was sort of dopey and you’d probably want to have a beer with him.
Why is it a negative if people are smart? Have we all lost our minds? Am I crazy if I want the president to be intelligent?
I want to have beers with PhDs and workers, old or young, who know too much, aka “overqualified.”
You can never know too much, right?
March 1st, 2010 at 3:35 pm
I’m 26 years old and I’m receiving my MLS after this semester. I’m new to the field and this article changed my mind about what “overqualified” means. I used to think that “overqualified” meant that you should look for something more worthy of your knowledge base. For example, if you have an MLS don’t apply for a page, or an office assistant position but a librarian I position. I’m still looking. Are there still academic library jobs out there for people with one master’s degree or am I “underqualified”?
March 1st, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Is Facebook a good way to look for library jobs?
March 1st, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Bella- FB has a fanpage for the getlibraryjobs.com website, which posts a broad array of positions, but is a better resource for professional development resources than it is for employment. http://joblist.ala.org/ is still the best place to find a listing. If you’re specifically looking for an academic library position, however, you may have to deal with the “issue” of not having a second master’s degree in a specific subject, which is often a standard requirement or preference in academic librarian postings. This might be less of a hurdle if you are interested in a tech services or other non-reference type position.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:47 am
‘'’At the same time, though, the article (especially the title) oversimplifies by painting “overqualified” as just a euphemism for “too old.””’
Nice article by Mr. Jacobs. i urge any one with experience to read the links he so generously provided. I have some objections to what Mr’ Jacobs did post. The above caption is one thing. We need to oversimplify much more often.
There could be a snot hanging from your nose and that could be the decisive factor to the interviewer’s quest for another candidate. Frankly, in my extremely limited and absolutely empty mind, we all have a preconceived notion that there is more to the idea of someone being ‘’overqualified'’ than just the fact that an individual with some miles on their heels is not what they are looking for. To call it blatant ‘’ageism'’ or discrimination is often an exaggeration of one’s ability to realize they are getting old. At 48, I’m actually happy working with younger people because I get to secretly laugh at their resilience and often the fact that nothing, I mean nothing they could do will ever shock a guy like me.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:49 am
I have to take issue with you, Robert, on a couple of points:
“I would declare that if you are indeed termed ‘over-qualified’ after an interview, obviously you failed the interview. It is your fault and no one else.”
This would assume that the people on the other side of the table were acting in good faith and were competent, secure professionals. That’s a huge assumption. I was once fired from a job for “misconduct”. What was the misconduct? Failing to turn around a failing account that two previous account managers failed to turn around. I just happened to be in the drivers seat when a new VP was looking to clean house and bring in her own crew. When I fought the termination, I was threatened. The company opposed my unemployment claim. I persisted. I still lost the job; but they didn’t even show up at the unemployment hearing; and both the people involved in my firing were fired within three months of my departure. Now, where was my responsibility in that fracas?
“I hired my employment strategist when I was very small. I believe it was about .50. There was a whole firm of them, seven to be exact. They simply said..’’there ain’t no trick to get rich quick, you dig, dig dig all day.’’” This has to be one of the most inarticulate and incomprehensible statements I’ve run across in a long time. It also implies that around the clock effort rather than smart effort is the way to success. Maybe you want to figure out what you’re trying to say before you share your wisdom cute.
You seem to be confusing accepting negative outcomes as valid results with being personally responsible for that outcome. You could be totally responsible for that outcome, if you don’t conduct yourself appropriately… or if you had snot hanging from your nose. Or the other person may be a total effing jerk, in which case you have no power other than to present your best face.
I’ve worked with people of all ages, and seemed to have problems with only a few who were in that “Peter Principle” category. Like a CEO with an MBA who didn’t have any idea what GAAP was, and who had to have the concept of “out of network coverage” in health insurance explained to him.
As Don Miguel Ruiz has observed in The Four Agreements, if you are impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions and do your best, the outcome will be appropriate and you will have done your part. That doesn’t mean it will be fair or that you will be rewarded. But you will have done your part, and in general, you will survive.
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Did you mention that they can pay younger people less money? Also, they think that older people are usually harder to manage cause they have a mind of their own.
March 11th, 2010 at 3:29 am
gregg,
Thank you for your critique of my post. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me and th erest of the posters and readers of this great web site.
An MBA I knew personally, one whom I worked for summed up his experience, and his success with only this: You are in business to create customers. This is all he said except that Peter Drucker once said that and if he had heard it before he wasted his time in college, he’d been much wealthier, much sooner. By the way, he took his business as far as he could, then bought the Atlanta Falcons.
January 2nd, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Age discrimination is a practice that is alive and well so it is important to have a professionally written resume that does not reveal your age. Different excuses are made by the employer for not hiring the individual but it is pretty clear that this practice won’t be stopped. The best thing to do is be persistent in your job search and explore different avenues in your career path. Most importantly, don’t give up your job hunt in getting the job of your choice.
January 4th, 2011 at 12:36 am
i have been considered “overqualified” by virtue of my salary history. i have been in the job hunt for over 2 years in a field often referred to as “recession proof”….health care finance/audit. if i listed every professional experience that has made me a well rounded and experienced medical biller/auditor, my resume would be 2 pages at least. when i DID list all of the positions that brought me to the point in my life at the time of an interview, the “overqualified” reply came back with the “thank you for playing” form letter. i had to interpret that either i was TOO good, or the h.r. folks did their job-math and ascertained that i was a tad older than their ideal candidate. both of these things are counterintuitive to what i would believe to be a good hiring technique: look for someone you wont have to train/babysit and someone with a touch of maturity. i happen to NOT look or emote my age by 15 years and i still cant figgure out why i would be passed over for someone that will spend time putting on makeup or talking on a cell phone all day at work (the pasttime of most of my former “younger” co-workers, who were significantly less experienced or educated than me). i must defer to the writer above who mentioned that younger employee’s will settle for less in the salary department. what isnt considered is that some of us more mature workers are not looking to buy the taj mahal anymore-we simply want to work and support ourselves and (maybe)our ageing parents. i have removed several entries from my resume and research the employer thoroughly prior to making application in order to try to avoid the family-run ‘drama’ camps or the ginormous employer who wont recognise me in the supermarket. i am hopeful that the overqualification issue will be a thing of the past if i, too, rate the potential employer. in the meantime i am applying for foodstamps and hope that i dont lose my home while i search for that good fit…….and spend my retirement money now trying to maintain a home.