Overqualified job seekers understate their qualifications

As a vice president of a dot-com, John Chin helped
screen job applicants who tried to make themselves
look better by overstating — even lying about — their
credentials.

Benjamin Pimentel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Ever since he lost his job more than a year ago,
though, Chin has been tinkering with his own resume
in hopes of landing a job — but he’s taking the
opposite approach.

Chin, whose background is in retail and merchandise
management, has been deleting some of his more
impressive credentials because several potential
employers have deemed him overqualified.

"Overqualified is a strange concept," said Chin, 33,
who was a vice president at Internet companies
Beyond.com and OneChannel. "It’s what the
employee makes of the position."

Many former tech workers who climbed the corporate
ladder during the Internet gold rush are finding that
playing up their career achievements can hurt their
chances of finding work. Some job seekers have
resorted to underselling themselves — downplaying
some of their skills and experience — in order to gain
employment.

One corporate recruiter called it "dumbing down" one’s
credentials, a practice that underscores just how
tough the labor market is, even for those with deep
resumes.

Chin had worked his way up from manager to vice
president of two technology startups before the
economic downturn cost him his job.

He took a sabbatical to spend time with his newborn
son, Spencer. But when he tried to get back to work,
he found stiff competition for a shrinking pool of
opportunities.

Chin faced another problem: Some employers told
him that they were worried he might not feel
challenged in a lesser position, so Chin started
tweaking his resume.

"I can’t lie," he said, adding that his resume still
includes his stints as vice president, but he began
deleting bullet points, including one about having
managed a team of 30 employees.

"The resume started getting lighter; it started going
the opposite direction," said Chin, who has come up
with 13 versions of his resume so far, but no job.

Janice, 60, another job seeker who asked to be
identified only by her first name, said she has come
up with four versions of her resume.

She got laid off in July 2001 after a long career in
human resources management. Each version of her
resume is tailored to the type of HR position she is
applying for.

"One resume is for director of HR," said Janice, who
moved to Washington, D. C., after she lost her job.
"One for manager of HR, one for HR generalist and
one for HR assistant."

She still keeps a resume that accurately states her
previous position as a vice president for HR, "but it’s
collecting dust," she said.

Even with her revised resumes, employers still can
gauge her actual skills during interviews.

"We think your potential is just too high and you’d be
bored," Janice recalled one prospective employer
telling her. She said others were worried that she’d
leave as soon as the economy picked up.

"They apply several sets of completely inappropriate
templates to what is really a work transaction, which
is ‘I work, you pay me,’ " she said. "We’re not getting
married."

Pam Blau, 37, who was a senior manager at another
tech company before her job got cut in November, has
refused to downplay her credentials.

But Blau has toned down her cover letters so as not
to appear "overzealous about my accomplishments."

Nancy Levine, vice president of client services at the
Pacific Rim, a Berkeley executive search firm, said
the dumbing down phenomenon is "yet another
barometer of our times."

With the economic downturn inundating the job
market with talent, many unemployed workers are
being forced to chase after jobs that don’t exactly
match their qualifications.

Mike Curran, director of Nova Workforce Board, a job
training and placement agency in Silicon Valley, said
he discourages job seekers from downplaying their
credentials because they end up leaving out "their
strongest cards."

Turnovers cost money, so Levine said employers do
worry about new hires getting bored or leaving. She
added that she finds the practice of understating one’s
qualifications understandable given the economy’s
grim outlook.

"I get a lot of calls from people who are in various
levels of desperation, " she said. "It’s scary out there.
If it’s a matter of survival, are you going to say (you)
managed four people instead of 30? I certainly
advocate for the truth. But how do you shape the truth
when your survival is at stake?

"If I was VP of marketing and I put on my resume I
was an IT manager, that’s an extreme example," she
added. "But if you were VP of marketing and you say
you were director of marketing, personally I don’t think
there’s anything so wrong with that."

Besides, she added, a resume is a sales document in
which "you have the power to be selective." Janice,
the former human resources executive, agreed, calling
a resume a form of advertisement.

"It’s not your CIA dossier," she said. "It has one
purpose: to get you an interview."

Once job seekers get their foot in the door, Levine
said, it is up to them to "justify that they will be
challenged, they won’t be bored, they’ll stay."

E-mail Benjamin Pimentel at
[email protected].

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