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Wrote this post a while ago, then re-purposed it on LinkedIn over the weekend. Did OK there (maybe 1,000 views and a handful of comments) and one of the comments jumped out to me first. It was about the whole notion of getting rejected for a job because you’re overqualified. I heard this a few times in my job search, although admittedly I heard other, more diverse complaints more. I started thinking about this on the way into work today. Follow my logic here:
- It’s believed that we live in a culture where (a) everyone is always busy and (b) business needs are constantly evolving.
- Think about social media in this context: years ago, that wasn’t even a wing of most organizations. (For some, it still isn’t.) Now orgs have 10+ people doing that.
- We’re always told we should be valuing things like curiosity when we hire new people.
OK, so …
Stop and Think Section
If we’re supposed to be looking for curious people and our business needs are constantly evolving, how does the word overqualified fit into a hiring discussion?
See, I understand there’s a baseline idea — like, if I was the former CEO of General Electric, I probably wouldn’t want to become the Twitter handle for some small business, no. But within a range of…
