In yesterday’s Tip of The Day we began to discuss the feared overqualified label.
Today we get more into the details of how to address it in your resume and what to consider in your interview to create implicit and explicit messages that help deal with the overqualified label.
1.- Be chronologically transparent. Avoid the old tricks of not including dates or rearranging your resume based on anything else but chronological order. It fools nobody and it only aggravates things. Hiring managers will think that you are trying to pull a fast one or even worst, they will feel that you are questioning their intelligence. Either way you lose.
2.- Focus more on skills not titles. Discuss your specific skills and don’t use your titles to describe what you did.
3.- Emphasis on teamwork not management. When it comes down to your responsibilities and accomplishments focus more on your individual accomplishments as a member of the team than as a leader or manager.
4.- Be clear about salary expectations. Make it clear from the start that you are flexible about salary and that your previous salary is of no relevance to your current job search.
5.- Demonstrate long term commitment. The single biggest fear of hiring over qualified candidates is that they will keep looking and leave when they find a higher level job. Demonstrate long term commitment and loyalty using evidence in your past that points to both of them.
We help our clients acquire, develop and transition talent through services such as Executive Search, Project Recruitment, Talent Development and Outplacement. Our recruiters and consultants thrive to become trusted advisors to our clients.
Follow us on LinkedIn, join our LinkedIn Networking Group and follow us on Facebook to stay up-to-date on our articles and the executive search projects we are working on.
