Or is it just a term made up to find an easier reason to reject job applicants?

So it looks like the consensus is “overqualified” is a euphemism for

  • “I’m afraid you’ll leave this job because I’m assuming you’ll have better chances elsewhere” aka “you won’t accept being my slave forever due to lack of opportunities”
  • “I’m afraid you might actually understand how shitty it is here and want to improve things. can’t have that”
  • “I don’t want to figure out how much to pay you when you know your worth”
  • “You cost too much”
  • “I have other reasons, but won’t say them”
  • @AA5B
    20•6 months ago

    More qualification might also translate into doing a job less well. Sometimes what’s important is prompt response, staying on script, getting many jobs done. A deeper understanding could mean you’re more likely to be bored by the tedium of the more shallow role, more likely to spend too much time on an individual task, more likely to address a concern completely rather than adequately or quickly

    For example, I am “overqualified” for many IT help desk roles and you bet I’d be slower than people that are good at the role. I’d be driven crazy by the repetitiveness and by stupid human tricks. At the end of my probation I’d be fired because while I answered that one customer in depth, my responsiveness metrics would be shit, I’d have addressed fewer than expected tickets, and I’d be dying to escape. Kudos to all of you who can do a better job than I.

    • @[email protected]
      9•6 months ago

      “If your router costs less than your PC, and your PC costs less than a house, I can’t help you.”

      • me. I stole it from someone here on Lemmy to replace my former goto-phrase: “Does it has a screen? No? Sorry bud. I only do machines with a lonely VGA port that isn’t even in use.”
    • HobbitFoot English
      5•6 months ago

      Yeah. I’ve seen great designers get noticeably frustrated when they can’t optimize the project to the level they could in school because there is a budget and maintenance factors that keep it from happening.

      You also start getting into issues where that staff can vastly outperform other staff and it creates tension in compensation.

    • @[email protected]
      4•6 months ago

      This was me a while back. I used to tell my wife that the fact that she didn’t know anything about tech meant my company would actually consider her a better employee because she would stick to the script and hold the company line, even if it was bullshit, because she wouldn’t know it was bullshit.