Landing a Job When Your Résumé's Too Good for It

You've lost your job.

But you don't immediately panic. After all, you have an undergraduate degree and perhaps an advanced degree. You either saved or more likely borrowed heavily to earn this get-out-of-unemployment-free card. So with your beefy résumé, you begin applying for jobs confident that you will land something soon paying the high five- or six-figure salary you've been accustomed to earning.

But then you hear those dreadful words: "I'm sorry; you're overqualified."

In a Homer Simpson moment, you exclaim, "D'oh!"

Unfortunately, many highly qualified and educated professionals are discovering that their overqualifications are a scarlet letter on their résumé.

The number of unemployed people rose 694,000, to 13.2 million, in March. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 5.1 million jobs, with almost two-thirds of the losses (3.3 million) occurring in the past five months, according to the Labor Department. During that period, job losses were spread across major industry sectors.

If those numbers aren't scary enough, the government figures show a disturbing trend. The number of long-term unemployed workers (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose to 3.2 million in March and has increased by about 1.9 million since the start of the recession.

With the massive layoffs and the extended time it takes to find a job, many of the unemployed are downgrading their job expectations and are applying for positions for which they are overqualified just so they can pay their bills. However, professionals are finding that employers are reluctant to hire them.

In some cases, employers are too cowardly to tell someone he's not the right fit for a position, so they use the "you're overqualified" route as an easy out.

But as I work with people searching for employment, it's more often the case that employers fear that an overqualified worker will quit as soon as a better offer comes along. Others worry the candidate may get bored or become dissatisfied with the position because she's earning much less than she's used to making.

In this year's Color of Money Challenge, I'm working with people who lost their jobs because of the recession. Overqualification has come up quite a bit.

Bobbie Wilson, one of the challengers who agreed to let me help her and her husband get through their financial troubles, heard the dreaded words right away during a recent job interview.