Being Overqualified
What it really means when people reject you for a job for that reason
Having been through some aspects of the social acceptability level through a few articles by now, there is another one to consider: the predatory level.
It sound dramatic, and indeed it is! There is an expectation to be more cynical and focused on improving your own situation, hence, the “predatory” term, if you are situated higher in the society’s hierarchy. The same thing in the company hierarchy. A manager is expected to be able to be as cynical as it takes to reject applicants and fire employees, and a higher manager should be mentally able to wipe out the basis of existence for dozens or hundreds of people with one command.
If you apply for a job that is lower in the hierarchy, you are on the contrary expected to be able to take orders and accept the conditions, without yourself trying to win anything on it. You are the prey of the predators above you.
Of course, we are not eating each other at work, so it is not exactly like on the savanna, but the underpinning mental logic is the same. We don’t even think about it specifically – we do not ask for a new employee to work at a certain level to have a specific “predatorial level”, but it is inherent from what else we ask for.
“Are you able to make fast decisions?” is such a question that managers will get at a job interview, which is, essentially, meant to show if you can refrain from any worries about what you do, and act as cynically as needed.
So, when you get the verdict that you are “overqualified”, it basically means that the one saying it believes that you mentally has moved above the level of predatory/subordinate expected for that particular job.
This explains why it can be immensely difficult to step down to a lower position, once you have been a manager – nobody will believe that if you could function as a predatory manager, you can also be a humble subordinate.
Many job coaches and similar have found out about that long ago, and advice you to just not tell in your CV that you have been a manager, if you are applying for a non-managerial job. And that you try, for any kind of job, to put some words and values into your CV and other informational material, that show you as the right level of cynical for the job level.
This dimension of the recruitment is not about practical skills, it is about your ability to be empathetic, which in some jobs is needed, in others unwanted, and about your ability to put yourself first, which is also seen as needed for upper management jobs.
For a management job, doing sports that are all about winning will be seen as positive, while sports that are all about participating, not so much about winning, are seen as more suitable for lower jobs, that are not managerial.
But be aware that some recruiters can’t step out of the habit to look for the lion in you, and they want every hire to have “management potential”. This may be because you then have a chance for a later promotion, but I have a suspicion that it is also about filling up the company with people who will not feel stepped on and mistreated when being fired, because they understand that this is a natural term of life. A predator understands a predator, is the logic.
That leads to an unpleasant conclusion: many companies are deliberately built up around a predatory base principle, and everybody working there will have a lower than average sense of empathy. Business schools and some other educational institutions try to both filter and train the students to become less empathetic. Business economics is not about the human factor, for instance, it is all about money. You sell something for the purpose of earning money, not for the purpose of making the worker happy for producing it, or the customer happy for using it.
Hence, people who radiate empathy as a main describing aspect of their personality, will not get a job.
The exception is then jobs where exactly empathy is strongly needed, such as kindergarten teacher, or nurse. Any kind of career job will be given to people who display a capability to love themselves more than others, so to speak, and who are not restricted by a moral sense or the compassion for others.
As I have seen it, this concept goes way beyond the traditional commercial businesses, and stretches into all other kinds of organizations as well. So that even a charity organization, which you might have believed would appreciate a strong sense of justice, moral, and empathy, is probably more interested in your leadership skills, which are defined by your ability to be cynical. Because, these organizations also have a hierarchy, and they also fire people and are working, in a sense, to optimize their earnings.
It all happens partly at an unconcious level, so you can’t even discuss it with people in the company – can’t convince them that you ability to sense the real needs of a colleague, so that you can help with what matters, this way making the company work well and making everybody happy – that this should be positive for the company. They will just feel that you are a loser if you try, and that you didn’t understand how life works.
Some societies are stronger focused on this pattern than others, and the USA is particularly cynical, in my experience. But the rest of the world gets much of their business principles and other societal ideas from the USA, and it is visible in all leadership methodologies, etc., that seeing the human aspect is considered a problem, not a benefit, for the one who wants to have a career of any kind.
How to deal with it?
Well, if you don’t want to become cynical and evil, then you probably don’t fit into a manager role. But if you already had such one previsously, you can either try to hide it, or you can accept your fate, be cynical, and go for another management job.
You can also go hunting for an organization of some kind that will value your humanist way of thinking. They do exist, but, to be honest, they are not many.
A better approach is probably to aim for doing something on your own or together with a few good friends, if that is possible to arrange. This will still require you to pretend that you can be cynical when talking to customers, the bank, or basically any other businesses, but at least you can be a humanist when you’re alone in the back office.
How this may affect other situations – when you are not job hunting – is actually rather simple: if you want to increase your social acceptability level in the sphere of social media, you should create a model that is focused on yourself. That’s the pattern I have seen work, at least. Start all posts with the word “I”, and make sure that you tell mostly about yourself and what you do, think, and want. Make sure that it is not phrased as being flexible – display confidence in your ideas, and drive them through forcefully. Take in questions and comments, but be arrogant if anyone suggests that a softer approach could be better.
No matter what topic you write about (which, on the other hand, will be “how to become popular” or similar for most such writers), you should express a wish for everybody to read it to become almost as popular as you, and tell them, cynically, that you need them to give you their money for this to happen.
Okay, now I was cynical. Maybe I really am a manager-type?
Whatever. I honestly don’t like it. I don’t want people to treat others badly, even if these “others” seem to want it, like the followers of the big social media accounts.
I hope that we can push back on the societal demand for being predatory, shaping both the society in general, charity organizations, the Internet, and companies, so that there are plenty of opportunities to build a carreer and get a good life even if we behave compassionate, empathetic, and with care.
And all suggestions for how to do that are more than welcome!
I think we can probably agree on how remarkably ego-centric much of the corporate world has become.
An observation that has fascinated me for years is that modern Satanism is not really about worshipping the Devil. At its core, it is about the worship of the ego. The individual self becomes the highest authority. It rests on ideas such as self-preservation as the highest principle, social Darwinism, "eugenics", and relative morality, where human beings themselves define what is right and wrong.
I realise that comparison may sound extremely provocative, and most of it may happen unconsciously, but I am actually quite serious about it. When I look at parts of the corporate world, I often see many of those same values expressed in a more socially acceptable form.
Self-preservation becomes career advancement, even if the "collateral damage" is other people.
Social Darwinism becomes competition between individuals, departments, and organisations. Pure "survival of the fittest".
Eugenics becomes the tendency to continuously reproduce the same leadership profiles by selecting people who think alike, behave alike, and share the same values and assumptions.
Relative morality appears whenever decisions that would be considered questionable in one context suddenly become acceptable because they improve efficiency, shareholder value, or quarterly results.
I am not claiming that companies are Satanic per se. I am simply pointing out that if you remove the religious language and look only at the underlying values, the overlap can at times be surprisingly difficult to ignore.
What resonated most with me, however, was your observation about overqualification.
I have often wondered whether the issue is not competence itself, but perceived threat. A manager may happily hire someone less experienced than themselves. Hiring someone substantially more experienced requires a degree of confidence and security that is unfortunately not always present.
How do you convince someone that you genuinely do not aspire to their chair?
How do you convince them that your priorities may have changed, that life experience may have altered your ambitions, and that you may be perfectly content contributing without climbing?
Many recruiters seem unable to imagine that possibility. They assume everyone is still playing the same game.
The irony is that organisations often claim to seek the best people, while quietly filtering out candidates who might challenge existing assumptions. It can easily result in a situation where the common denominator gradually becomes the safest rather than the strongest candidate.
I like to say: Don't hire for the best cultural fit, but for the best challenging of the culture.
I also suspect this is particularly true in Denmark. We like to think of ourselves as egalitarian and non-hierarchical, yet there is often a surprisingly strong pressure towards conformity. We are comfortable with people who fit expected patterns. We become less comfortable when somebody steps outside them.
Another aspect of your article that struck me is the tendency to equate decisiveness with competence. Fast decisions are often celebrated, while thoughtful decisions are interpreted as hesitation. Yet experience tends to teach the opposite lesson. The longer you have lived and worked, the more aware you become of complexity, unintended consequences, and the limits of certainty.
I would love to be asked, “Are you able to make fast decisions?”
My answer would promptly be:
“Yes. I just did.” :-)
Perhaps what many organisations are really selecting for is not competence, but predictability. Not necessarily the most capable candidate, but the candidate who most closely resembles their existing mental model of success.
That may also explain why experienced people sometimes struggle more than expected. The very experiences that taught them nuance, humility, empathy, and complexity can make them appear less certain than someone who has not yet discovered how complicated reality actually is.
Like you, I hope there is another path. Not because I think ambition is wrong, and not because I think leadership is wrong, but because I believe a healthy society should also have room for people whose primary strengths are wisdom, empathy, integrity, mentorship, and care. If every institution rewards only the traits associated with competition and self-interest, we should not be surprised when those traits become dominant throughout society.