Sometimes being overqualified for a position (or at least being told that you’re over qualified…you might think you’re not but the employer does!) is an issue you’ll deal with when applying for jobs.

You might think the job fits your skills and experience but the employer feels you’re too qualified and decides either not to hire you or perhaps not even interview you.

As an IT recruiter, I have faced this many times, where I either had a candidate who I had to convince was too senior for a job they wanted to apply for, or where I was told by the hiring manager for a particular position that the person I’d sent over for consideration for the job was overqualified.

Often, we’ll see candidates who are overqualified with experience where the employer simply feels that the job will bore this person and they’ll probably quit within a few months if they were hired.

In other cases, it’s the level of education that scares an employer away. I’ve seen PhD-level candidates who scare off hiring managers because the manager thinks the person is too heavily tilted on the scholastic side and is over educated for the position. As in the first example where the person has too much experience in the eyes of the employer, in this case the bottom line is usually that the employer figures the person would get bored by the job and the last thing an employer wants is a bored employee who is likely to quit and find a more suitable job.

What should you do if you’re being told that you’re overqualified for positions you’re applying to?

Some recruiter and perhaps your friends will tell you to dumb down your resume and/or lie during interviews. This isn’t a good idea because typically you’ll either end up with a less-than-suitable job that you’ll be bored in (see comments above) and/or you’ll get caught in your lie(s).

The best thing you can do is ensure you’re only applying for jobs that interest you and that you are actually qualified for. That is, jobs that you are not under qualified for nor overqualified for.

For an earlier post on being overqualified, please click here.

I’ve been laid off twice in my career. The first time was when I was working with a company that went bankrupt. I was coming into the office one morning and found our manager taping a note on the door that said “All classes are canceled today.” We were a computer training company, hence the reference to classes.

As we made eye contact, I could tell she wasn’t very happy so I just said “should I bother unpacking my lunch?” to which she replied “I’ll be making an announcement shortly.”

I didn’t bother unpacking my lunch that day. About 30 minutes after I arrived and the other staff had as well, the owner of the company appeared (he lived out of state) along with a bankruptcy agent who informed us that the company was filing for bankruptcy and that effective immediately, we were all out of work. He kindly asked us to pack up our stuff and asked that we leave the office within the next 30 minutes, so that’s what we did.

I recall the sight of us all leaving the office at about 9:45am that day, boxes and bags in hand. I remember thinking that everyone that saw me probably knew I’d been laid off since I was carrying all my stuff with me. It reminded me of the movies where you see someone losing their job and then seeing them leave the office with all their belongings in paper banking boxes.

I knew business had been slow but I figured that things would pick up and that owner would keep pumping in money until that day came.

Obviously that’s not what happened.

I got back to my condo and wondered what I was going to do next. Then I started wondering how I was going to even figure out what to do next.

The second time I got laid off, I was part of a bigger downsizing along with other staff. At the time I was working for an Internet-based company and the reality was that we were becoming a staff-heavy company competing with a lot of mom and pop shops being run out of their basement with little to no overhead.

In both cases, the circumstances were different but the result was the same.

Getting laid off can be a really demotivating, upsetting, devastating experience. That’s especially true when the economy is tough and jobs are scarce as they are these days in many industries and regions.

To read some past entries on firings, layoffs and downsizings, click here.