How to Apply for a Job You're Overqualified For

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Table Of Contents

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Lisa Rangel is the Managing Director of Chameleon Resumes. As a recruitment professional for over 13 years, she has held management and recruiter roles for international recruitment conglomerates and private search firms. She knows first-hand what resumes win interviews and are awarded offers from reviewing thousands of resumes over the years and helping hiring managers seek talent for their premier organizations. She speaks of how to stay consistently employed at her podcast The Pretend You're Fired Today podcast, found at pretendyourefiredtoday.com and offers free resume samples and training at resumecheatsheet.com.

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  • What did you learn from the 2016 job hunt?
  • What was your favorite client success story from 2016? (about how they got a job)

A listener emailed me to say she was being deemed overqualified for the jobs she was applying to and asked if we could do a podcast on the subject.

Quotable

Overqualified generally means you are a CFO applying for a controller job or a Director of Marketing of a $20 million firm applying for a Marketing Manager job of a start-up company ... you bring more experience to the table than the job needs and employers get afraid that you will be bored or will leave when a better job comes along.

  • How to deal with being overqualified with your search?
  • How do you advise people to craft their resume if they want to apply to a job that might be overqualified for?
  • Is it wise to dumb down your resume to appear less qualified by removing certain duties and roles?
  • Career changer?
  • What can you do in the interview to lessen the perception of being overqualified?
  • Last words of advice?