Overqualified and office survivor

by Shadowmaster on 09/12/09 at 12:21 am

Office, the final frontier…

your sec­ond home, but still from time to time you find your­self won­der­ing what if…? Well this arti­cle is just for you, you find out it’s time to seek a bet­ter new 2nd home, as your cur­rent work holds you and doesn’t allow you to advance in your sur­vival path of the real life.

Every­one knows that there are 2 ways to get promoted:

the reg­u­lar one is to be pro­moted inside your office – this is the best way and if you have this option go for it, but most of the times you find your­self sit­ting in the same place month after month doing your job.

I’m not going to get on how to find a new place of work as most of it was dis­cussed in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle I have pub­lished (here) and there are reg­u­lars known ways of ask­ing friends and etc… this arti­cles is regard­ing being overqual­i­fied when you seek for a new position.

As an office sur­vivor you did your magic and man­aged to find a posi­tion that suits you – the place sounds good, the posi­tion is superb, the money is ok, you decide to send your resume and after few days you get a phone ask­ing you to come for an interview.

After a cou­ple of days you are get­ting a mes­sage from that place say­ing that they are sorry but you are overqual­i­fied for the position.

Overqual­i­fied is a nice word that lately a lot of places has started to use , it has 2 meanings :

1. it’s the nice way to say “thanks but not thanks”.
2. sec­ondly it might be the true.

if you know peo­ple in that office they could ask around and see if this is the rea­son or not. I’m going to deal with the sec­ond option (that you are really overqual­i­fied) in this article.

How can it be you think to your­self? You aren’t doing some­thing that enti­tled you this “title” nor your CV doesn’t inflect some­thing like that, and you know that you didn’t empower your­self and tweak your job when you were inter­viewed – so where is the problem?

I’ll tell you where the prob­lem is, the prob­lem is in your cur­rent office, it doesn’t see you as who you really are, it doesn’t allow you to progress, it pro­vides you a work­ing place and expe­ri­ence but it doesn’t pro­vide you what you want – to be pro­moted. What can I do?

Well don’t be panic, there is no need to omit parts of your work­ing expe­ri­ence, you work hard and deserve what you did, and you sure know you can han­dle a more respon­si­ble job.

1.  Dur­ing the inter­view make sure you are ask­ing about the nature of the posi­tion, as some­times there is slight dif­fer­ent from what is writ­ten in the ads to the actual posi­tion – you have to do this step twice, dur­ing the phone inter­view in order to learn about the posi­tion, and in the first frontal interview.
2. You have pass the expec­ta­tion phase regard­ing the nature of the posi­tion and here you are sit­ting at the entrance and wait­ing to be called in for the inter­view. This is a good to have a small talk with the recep­tion­ist, try­ing to under­stand about the posi­tion, com­pany, what hap­pened to the per­son before, etc… (This step doesn’t work all the time as it depends on your charm and skills to get such infor­ma­tion, and also about the recep­tion­ist will to share this kind of infor­ma­tion). This small talk can let you know for exam­ple that you have all the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the job but the boss loves “yes-man” or to be noti­fied about each step you doing while work­ing , in this case you should drop sen­tences as “I need my space when doing my work , I can’t pro­vide step by step each time” or “I’m ask­ing ques­tions and inves­ti­gate before I’m start­ing with the mis­sion” – even if it’s you , don’t say this as it will tag you as “overqual­i­fied” for the position.
3.  Its show time — you are being asked to enter the room and the inter­view starts. Pay atten­tion to the interviewer’s face reac­tions when you talk about your­self – face reac­tions can tell a lot, when you notice uncom­fort­able face reac­tion don’t empower your­self as most chances you are get­ting into the “overqual­i­fied zone”, some of the inter­view­ers tell you that you are overqual­i­fied. So now you know you are overqual­i­fied in the eyes of the inter­view­ers, don’t tell him some­thing like “if you pay­ing me the amount I’ll do the work” as this might show that you are des­per­ate for the job. The best way to deal with this sit­u­a­tion (if you weren’t told yet that you are overqual­i­fied) is to rise is up by saying :

It seems I might be overqual­i­fied for the posi­tion, but I always wanted to have a posi­tion in a com­pany like yours which allows me to learn new things and to use my exper­tise in a new field

On the other hand if you are being told by the inter­viewer that you are overqual­i­fied you can tell some­thing like

“I’m look­ing for some­thing less stress and to be able to spend some time with my family”.

Using sim­i­lar approach gives your future to be supe­rior the option to give you a chance even if you seems (for him) overqualified.

In both cases if you want to make a strong impres­sion that you want this job than you can offer an agree­ment which you’ll sign for min­i­mum a year at the present loca­tion – this act leaves a strong impres­sion on your inter­view­ers and chances are that even if you get accepted to that office, you’ll have to sign such a contract.

Your mis­sion is to find a new place of work in order that will pro­mote you and help you to advance. When some sees you as overqual­i­fied most chances that oth­ers will too, overqual­i­fied isn’t a bad word and there are approaches to deal with it as long you pay lit­tle bit atten­tion to what’s going on and being proac­tive about it. Remem­ber — know­ing how to deal a sit­u­a­tion as “overqual­i­fied” allows you to over­come it and mov­ing for­ward for your success.

Overqual­i­fied and office sur­vivor , 9.0 out of 10 based on 1 rat­ing

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