

The New Résumé: Dumb and Dumber - prakash
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124328878436252195.html

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anigbrowl
IME 'you're overqualified' = authoritarian management. A classic book worth
reading is 'On the psychology of military incompetence' by Norman F. Dixon, if
you don't mind extrapolating the observations to other contexts.

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smanek
Not necessarily ...

If you're 'over-qualified' for a particular job, then you're either going to
be promoted or switch jobs very quickly. In either case, the company still has
to spend a lot of time and money training your replacement.

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dschobel
If employers are that worried about someone jumping ship they can always make
them a contract employee.

That way they get the smart guy or gal AND the security of knowing they'll be
around for a while.

Hiring duds just because they'll stick around for a long time seems self-
defeating in a very fundamental way.

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stewiecat
hiring duds also leads to hiring more duds once work ramps up and the current
set of duds can't handle it. Rinse, lather, repeat...

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jnorthrop
I read the subtext of that article as "take a job that will pay you less than
your worth because that is all that is available right now."

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dschobel
I was surprised when the article mentioned tech people lowering their
expectations.

I've had a few friends in my city (Chicago) get laid off only to land higher
paying jobs in 2-3 weeks.

Is that just a big-city phenomenon?

~~~
menloparkbum
Outside of absolute necessity, there are other reasons people might want to
work below their current capacity. The archtypical "day job." I've been
working on a personal project which I hope to evolve into a business. I took
some time off to do this in March. My finances are starting to run low and
I've been looking for an easy job which will pay my rent and maybe have health
insurance, and have had many of the problems described in the article. I was
offered a job as a CTO of someone else's startup, but the nearby college won't
hire me as a PHP drone.

~~~
billswift
I quit my job last October to try some writing (which unfortunately isn't
going well) and some studying. I, too, am running short of funds, but got
hired for a low level position at the local Walmart, which more than meets my
bills, and gives me plenty of time to think about what I want.

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Dilpil
Ironic that someone with 26 years of marketing experience had trouble figuring
out how to present her resume.

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azanar
The problem is more nuanced that that.

She is having to present herself as something she is not for the sake of
getting whatever company to buy the product she is selling. She isn't lying as
such, but she is electing to not tell certain truths that can get her
potential employer rather irked if they find out later on she was just culling
her resume to appear like a good fit. This is especially true if she does what
most employers worry overqualified candidates will do, and she jumps rather
swiftly to a more senior position elsewhere. Then it will be pretty obvious
what happened, and she'll have a bad reputation with at least one firm.

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radioactive21
This is not necessarily true.. My resume was slim since i recently graduated,
i didn't get much call backs at all. The resume was the problem, when i
started adding more technical jargon, specifically tailoring to what the tech
or knowledge that the job required, that's when i got calls.

I found out that your degree does have a SIGNIFICANT factor, but it depends on
the company. Boeing for example, 99.9999% of the time will only read your
resume if you have a Engineering degree, heck the higher the degree the
better. Same thing with Microsoft, Google, etc.

Learn to write a better resume, meaning dont throw stuff you know down. Put
things that apply specifically to the job you're applying for. In this case
she said she sent out 100 times? With what, the same exact resume? That's a
mistake.

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edw519
"I'd never feel comfortable putting a really high-level candidate into a lower
level position," says Ms. Eilbes, who recruits for Manpower and other
clients."

This is why headhunters would fuck up the whole world if given half the
chance.

It's also exactly the opposite of what real achievers know to be true. Real
progress begins once people are _bigger_ than their jobs.

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azanar
Agreed.

The headhunters aren't the only ones to blame though. They operate off of the
notion, often correct, that people who fill positions they are totally capable
of doing with extra time left over, they will encounter perpetual resistance
to the progress they want to motivate. Eventually, they will get fed up and
move somewhere else that either isn't averse to change, or where they don't
have time to think about progressive ideas.

The headhunter is just playing the averages, since she'll probably collect the
same fee regardless. She won't be rewarded differently for that one
overqualified hire who turns out to be a major catalyst for progress at a
company, but she'll be penalized the same for all of the overqualified hires
which hit the brick wall of bureaucracy and leave.

~~~
edw519
"Eventually, they will get fed up and move somewhere else..."

This has nothing to do with the fact that they were bigger than the job. They
knew that going in.

It has everything to do with the fact that their talents have been wasted and
a great opportunity has been squandered by their management, who also knew
that going in.

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akamaka
There's a much simpler explanation which I find equally plausible.

If the job you're applying for doesn't require a master's degree, then why
waste the reader's precious attention on something irrelevant? As a programmer
applying for a web development job, would you mention that you know how to
program x86 assembler? Probably not.

Let's not forget that the word "résumé" is French for "summary". You're not
supposed to include everything!

