Allow me to paraphrase one of the first phone interviews I participated in after being laid off:

Employer: “What’s most important here is for you to be able to support the full breadth of what I’m doing as the Director. Whether it’s SEO, traffic analysis, or even putting together wireframes and mock-ups, I need you to be my right-hand man. I don’t expect this position to have six or seven years of experience in each area as I do, but I need you to be competent everywhere so I can feel good about passing things your way.”
Candidate: “Great, I have nine years of experience in those fields, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Employer: “Oh. I see.”

It’s pretty obvious from that excerpt that I sealed my fate right then and there – would you bring someone into your company knowing they had more experience than you and were going to be more cost-effective? Granted, I’d still answer the same way today (ask me again next month), but that’s because I despise dumbing myself down, not to mention my well-documented history of lacking a speech filter. But is this the path to short-term success?

I suppose it depends on how desperate you are for work. As a candidate applying for a job you’ll be overqualified for, you can often assume the following to be true:

• You’ll be underpaid
• You’ll feel stifled or slowed down by your boss
• You’ll be considered a peer to people who should be your subordinates

Can you handle that? If so, take a really close look at your resume and cover letter for every single job you apply to. Figure out who your supervisor will be and put yourself in his/her shoes. Overqualification is not something employers seek out – especially in this job market. While it has its obvious upside, an overqualified employee often costs more than the position’s market average, becomes quickly frustrated and has a hard time working in a team, and may have little to no loyalty to the company if presented with an opportunity elsewhere.

So, how do you look as qualified as possible without looking overqualified? Here are a few tidbits I’ve passed along to others recently:

• Vague adjectives are your friend. Take my above interview example. I could have just said I had “extensive” experience rather than exposing that I’ve been doing it longer than my potential boss has. Just make sure you keep boasting your specific experience where it counts.
• A rose by any other name… If your last post was Director, and you’re looking at a smaller/less successful company’s opening for Manager, you might try referring to your past position as “Supervisor”. Get me?
• Age is just a number. Are you seeking a position that requires 3-5 years’ experience? Then why would your resume state that you graduated in 2001? Stating the date of your graduation is not a resume requirement – don’t expose yourself. Kudos to my dad for that tip.
• What have you done lately? Candidates with over 10 years of experience sometimes have a tough time squeezing all their relevant positions onto one page, but guess what: the level of interest employers have in your past performance drops off exponentially from your most recent to your least. Nobody gives a crap about what you did 5 jobs ago, and like your graduation date, it shows you’re a little long in the tooth for many positions. Keep the top 3-4 items unless you’ve got something really amazing to dig up from your distant past.
• Be so excited that you just can’t hide it. What’s the tone of your cover letter? Surely you’re not talking about how you lost your last position, but are you coming off as a frustrated individual who thinks he/she deserves the position? Think about what this job would mean to you if you were younger and/or not so qualified. Be excited about the opportunity to learn, grow, blah blah blah. Yeah, makes me sick to my stomach too.

Now again, if someone were to give me this advice, I’d say thanks but no thanks. However, it’s understandable that many of you out there really do need the paycheck much more than the satisfaction of being placed where you can be most effective… and in that case, it might be worth considering doing some experimentation: find several openings for the same job title, and shoot out your usual self-promotion to one half (the control group) while sending a dumbed-down version to the other. If you have interesting findings from such a technique, or if you just want to rail on us for even suggesting this strategy, leave some love in the comment box!

Tags: dumbing down, interview, overqualified