Re: Resume inflation (was Re: [SAGE] Tests for SystemsAdministrator interviews.)

[Brad Knowles <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>]

At 7:47 AM -0400 2004-09-16, Steve Simmons wrote:

>                    The problem led to me writing carefully puffed resumes
>  to make my way past the keyword filters of the recruiters.  Once I started
>  doing that, I started getting more calls back.  Most of those ended with
>  be being rejected because I was overqualified.  I'd grind my teeth and
>  think "If you didn't need those skills, why did you list them?"

	I think overqualification is a major problem for many of us that 
have been around a while.  Unfortunately, I don't see an easy way to 
solve this problem.

	If you come in the low range of the qualifications for the job, 
they might still hire you for the job and train you up, with the hope 
that they'd be able to keep you longer than otherwise.  But if you're 
overqualified, you've got virtually no hope, because they "know" they 
won't be able to pay you what you're worth (or what you think you're 
worth), and they "know" that you'll bail as soon as you can.


	Now, you could become a consultant, who don't typically have any 
problems getting a contract if they are overqualified (although the 
customer might not be able to afford them).  Unfortunately, many 
people are not suited to being consultants.

	Of those that are suited to be consultants, there is the problem 
of finding a suitable consulting company to work for, because most 
geeks probably couldn't properly run a consulting business if their 
lives depended on it -- We tend to be techies and not have much in 
the way of grasp of the business side of things.

>                                                                     So
>  I don't see it getting better for a while.  The best source of candidates
>  is still networking, but when it fails, the fallback is pretty ugly.

	Sadly, the result is that the situation is grim on both sides of 
the table, and the older we get, the worse our prospects are.

	I'm hoping that LinkedIn can help in this area, but I have yet to 
have the value of this system proven to me.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.