Most job seekers feel it’s only natural to include on their resumes the job experience and academic credentials that reflect best upon them. But increasing numbers of applicants concerned about appearing overqualified say that approach no longer makes sense.
Take it from Dee McKinsey, whose work history as a producer, managing editor and assistant news director has included stints with the Associated Press, four major radio networks and with WBBM-AM in Chicago. When creating her resume during a job hunt a year ago, she took a hard look at her experience.
“It was too much,” recalled McKinsey, who landed a job as a media specialist for DePaul University five months ago. “I left a lot of stuff off.”
Consider, too, Jean Coyle, an Alexandria, Va.-based sociologist and gerontologist who has been job hunting for two years. Though she has a Ph.D. in sociology, the degree isn’t on many of the resumes she has sent in the last year.
“At least two or three months into 1995, I was still leaving my Ph.D. on there,” said Coyle, a former college professor who has sent at least 1,500 resumes in the last two years, seeking positions ranging from writing and editing to training and teaching.
“But I eventually realized I was just wasting my postage. I don’t apologize for my Ph.D., but I know from my experience it has been a discriminating factor.”
McKinsey and Coyle aren’t alone, say experts. Many job candidates are concerned that their accomplishments could lead prospective employers to suspect them of viewing the job as a way station until something better appears. So, they’re withholding information from their resumes.
“I’ve always seen it to some degree, but it’s become more common in the past two to three years,” noted Bonnie Bachman, career consultant with Career Directions Inc., which, with offices in Rolling Meadows and Chicago, specializes in corporate and individual career development.
“People feel more of a pressure to downplay, because they feel they won’t be considered for jobs with a lesser title or smaller salary (than what they enjoyed in the past).”
Bachman has noted the trend most often among job seekers with multiple degrees. One of her clients, a man in his 30s, has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in computer science. Laid off after 10 years as an engineer for a major East Coast company, the man moved to Chicago to look for employment. When listing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees on his resume, he met with scant success.
“He has gotten many more interviews with manufacturing firms by leaving the master’s degree in computer science off,” said Bachman. “The degree can be positive in some cases, but in others, it’s just distracting.”
Coyle believes her Ph.D. and long work experience have turned off and even intimidated prospective employers. So, she tailors resumes to the job requirements.
“I don’t put down how many years experience I have,” she said. “If you tell them you have 20 and they’re looking for two, you’re gone. So I respond to what is required. If they say they want a master’s degree, I tell them I have that.”
In such cases, she usually doesn’t mention the Ph.D. “In non-academic milieus, a Ph.D. isn’t necessarily preferred, and it may be a detriment,” she said.
In McKinsey’s case, it was a prestigious and varied work history she sought to downplay. Faced with declining numbers of jobs in network radio and desiring to return to Chicago, where she worked for seven years, McKinsey moved here from the East Coast last year without a job. The resume she created for her search reflected only part of her experience.
“I figured it wasn’t important anymore,” she recalled. “(Friends) said, `You did all this at CBS,’ and I said that’s not important.
“My (work history) to some people is still intimidating. I’m beginning to think of some of my experience as a hindrance. So I did just a couple lines on each job I had. So what that I was part of the Pentagon pool? It didn’t translate to what people were looking for here.”
Moreover, McKinsey is convinced a resume only opens doors to interviews. After that, the applicant must sell herself. “So I keep (the resume) short and sweet, and I leave things off,” she said.
“The resume was a one-page resume that listed all her jobs. What she didn’t put on was all the sub-descriptions (of those jobs),” said McKinsey’s boss, Denise Mattson, director of media relations for DePaul. “I was impressed with the resume she sent me. My view was `wow, she could have her pick of jobs.’ I thought with her background, she could bring DePaul’s professors to a whole new audience. So how could I pass her up?
“After she was hired all of her experiecne came out. She had been completely honest with me.”
“They’ve been supportive and get a kick out of some of my `war stories,’ ” said McKinsey of the reaction to her experience. “Sometimes they’re surprised. But it’s no big deal.”
Omitting degrees and experience from a resume isn’t a breach of ethics, Bachman believes. “You aren’t required on any resume to tell everything you know or everywhere you worked,” she said. “I think it’s ethically all right to leave it off. My major concern is that they’re selling themselves short. Are they going to start viewing themselves as less capable?”
Paul Barada, president of Barada Associates of Rushville, Ind., a leading resume fact-checking service, has another view. Barada has noticed the phenomenon, and feels it’s unfair to job hunters and employers.
“It’s still dishonest, because you’re misrepresenting yourself to prospective employers,” he said. “It’s a sin of omission. It’s just as much a lie to leave something out.”
Taking a job for which you’re overqualified, he added, can quickly lead to jealousy and dissatisfaction by employer and employee. “We’ve seen situations where a person is more capable than the person to whom he’s reporting,” Barada said. “The subordinate says, `He should be working for me,’ and the boss says, `This guy’s good. I better keep him down.’ “
To avoid problems later, he concludes, honesty is still the best policy. “It’s been said that if you tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said,” Barada noted with a chuckle.
“The employer may be getting a bargain by getting someone overqualified. But he’s entitled to know that.”
Barada recalled an incident in the last 10 weeks in which a major Midwest manufacturer contacted Barada for background on an individual they had hired. The employee had become condescending toward coworkers that were “ostensibly his peers,” according to Barada, and that made his employers suspicious.
“The employers said `this isn’t working, check it out,’ ” Barada said. “We found that the indiviual had a Ph.D. in education and had applied for and received a job that required only a bachelor’s degree.”
Because the employee was in a 90-day probationary period, he was terminated “for falsifying his resume,” Barada said.
