down on your resume. You may not get the job as you are over qualified and probably won't stay long if something better came along. From experience, companies waste too much time training and get workers where they want only to leave. So the company figures why bother and they are right in many cases. Of course the smart worker keeps the MBA off the resume for that job and increases their chances.

You might catch us funneling money so you are overqualified for the job. No one ever said, but might have been thinking it.

You might have health issues, or a life outside work, family, etc. And you might expect too much money, benefits or Gawd forbid stability. You also may not be gullible enough to be easily manipulated and taken advantage of. But mostly it means your too old.

Apparently, this common sense understanding is not right, but that's how it usually functions.

They know you could probably be making more money than they're offering elsewhere and think that you'll only be taking the job because "it's better than nothing". They're afraid that they'll spend time and money bringing you on and getting you up to speed only to have you quit for a better offer. And when that's their thinking, they're usually right.

I did it once. I'd been looking for a job for some time and wound up taking a job for chump change wages and awful work atmosphere just to have a job to go to and some money coming in. Four months in I got a call from a place where I'd interviewed almost a year earlier with a much better future, worlds better benes (any benefits would have been major improvement over what they offered) and 50% more money. The very definition of a no brainer. With my experience and work history, they can't have really believed that I'd be around long.

That can mean either they are planning to downsize those positions or they have no clue how to retain talent.

They know it, you know it, and it will only be a question of time until you demand a higher salary or start looking for another job.

There were a lot of job postings for a hospital for a variety of jobs from lab work to housekeeping. This hospital was a short bus ride away from me and one of my relatives worked there for over 20 years at this point, so I thought it would be a sure bet I would get something.

I could not have been more wrong.

One person controlled the hiring decisions from not tossing the application in the circular file, meetings with other managers in the departments, to the ultimate hiring decision; a human resources generalist. And so for all of these jobs I applied to, which was close to a hundred and all jobs I thought I was qualified for, almost every single one was rejected outright. I was 'overqualified', I was not qualified enough, I didn't put enough information in why I left jobs or why I have a gap in my job record (Gee, now why is that?), and sometimes job applications just fell down the memory hole, I would call and they would say they're still working on it... months later. Whatever the case, there was a very thin line between 'not qualified' and 'overqualified'.

So I suspect that one of the sources of applicants being 'overqualified' is managers who don't really know what they are doing, it is a form of corruption and it probably goes hand in hand with being 'overqualified' because you might be more qualified than the manager hiring you.

We really need a new Civilian Conservation Corps.

The important point is to connect them all. They are all contributing factors to my abstention from being a wage slave in 2002.

Training a person for a job takes time and commitment from other company resources. An overqualified person is not going to be content performing what might be considered menial or degrading tasks.

Why would a company spend that time and money training you when you're just going to leave at the first opportunity.

Either because you will get a better offer soon and they figure you just want this job as a placeholder or they figure you won't be happy because the job won't be satisfying for you.

It's something HR wonks learn about in school and study- they know that statistically an overqualified person won't be retained as long.

If you think a job may feel you are overqualified it's not a bad idea to include a letter with reasons that would assuage their concerns.

I am not HR but in my current job work way too close with them doing background investigations. The reasons they weed out applicants seem like voodoo sometimes.

My career level for the last decade or so has been department level leadership in either corporate or large mfg site. Director of Operations, or Quality, or Supply Chain being typical titles. I don't have much desire or even less all the attributes needed to hit the C level, and that's fine. But I'm also not a distant sit in the office and ask to be spoonfed kind of guy. I keep up with being an ERP super-user so I have access to the info I need and can spot issues in the transactions under my remit before the KPIs shift and, with no doubt a steep learning curve in some of the details, I could always take over, say, a planner or QE role if needed as backup.

But when I like many others faced a nigh year-long unemploymewnt stint in the recent recession, I got bored enough to apply to do those kind of jobs full time. The answer I got, if any at all, was always the overqualified one. Even though I've always lived below my means so I could afford the pay cut, and frankly wouldn't miss the part about being responsible for the work of others, those potential employers knew what I know when I see analogous applications myself. I would have been bored, and underutilized, and before long chafing at the bit that I wasn't in on the strategic level activities I am used to.

Hiring a master craftsman to run an assembly station doesn't get you a master assembler. It gets you a bored and likely resentful craftsman.

Nothing can screw up a good workplace like adding in a bored and unsatisfied worker in the mix.