Job Status: “Overqualified”

If you’ve got 20 years or more of professional work experience and you’re looking for a job these days, no doubt you have been told more than once that you’re “overqualified.”

I will use a friend and former colleague as an example. Lisa, like so many people I know, myself included, is a seasoned marketing professional. She has dedicated her career to advertising agencies and corporate clients. She has sacrificed so much of her life helping others make money. No doubt, she’s been able to provide for her family, but not without a significant personal toll.

Like so many of us “ex” agency people, what Lisa brings to any professional environment is deep communications experience: strategic, integrated marketing insights, multi-channel creative management, results based business acumen. Experience that goes deep: managing individuals and teams, managing budgets, managing “up,” managing under pressure, solving problems, initiative. Plus, she’s nice AND smart.

So yesterday she learns, after her seventh (7^th) job interview with company A, that she is a great candidate, but she’s considered “overqualified.”

What does that mean, overqualified?

• Perhaps it is a euphemism for “we can’t afford to pay you what you used to earn.” Let me just clarify that most of us would just be happy with a paycheck and some health insurance.

• Perhaps the concern then becomes that if this overqualified individual takes the job for a lesser salary that they’ll be happy today, but by 2010, when the economy supposedly starts to turn around, they will want more money or leave. Mr. Prospective Employer, you could have worse problems. Take the experience at a reduced rate while you can get it. Think of it as a trial run. If they are that good, then they will have made you enough money so you can afford to pay them what they deserve. If not, let them go.

• Perhaps the concern – and this is valid – is that this person isn’t a “doer” because they are so senior. I share this concern, but I think in this economy you will find plenty of very senior level people that will happily take on project management roles and do them with great skill and efficiency (which means happier clients and improved profitability). Remember that point about a paycheck and health insurance?

• Perhaps the problem is that the “overqualified” employee will report to an “under qualified” manager. Now we’re getting somewhere. Good, smart people apparently ruffle the tenure structure.

The point I want to stress is that the term “overqualified” is relative to something or someone else. If an organization passes over really great talent because of formidable qualifications, what does that say about the organization? What message does it send to clients?

Sure, we need structure, and sometimes even hierarchy, but brains and experience tend to develop better strategies and solutions for success.

David Ogilvy would have loved today’s hiring environment. He would have embraced the tremendous pool of talent available today and I imagine he would use the opportunity to clean house. I learned early on in my career at Ogilvy about the Russian Dolls. Every so often, Ogilvy would send each of his directors a set of Russian nesting dolls, where inside the largest doll would be a small one, and then a smaller one, and so on. In the smallest doll, he would place a piece of paper that read: “If we hire people who are smaller than we are, we will become a company of dwarfs. If we hire people who are larger than we are, we’ll become a company of giants.”

Now, I am off to my therapy group. “Hi, my name is Hugh Allspaugh and I am overqualified.” Please hire me.