Overqualified? How to Repackage Your Years of Experience
Episode 524 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Loren Greiff
What is your interviewer actually saying when they deem you “overqualified”?
If there’s one thing the data from the Bossed Up listener survey made clear, it’s that many of you feel stuck in your jobs. Often, the daunting nature of the modern job search is a big part of that. All too often, I hear about highly capable mid- and senior-level leaders missing out on jobs because they’re “overqualified.” As if the job search wasn’t soul-sucking enough, that label can leave you at a loss for what to do next.
After being put on a performance improvement plan for being too enthusiastic, my guest today, Loren Greiff, could have wilted and dialed back her gusto. Instead, she quit her job, leaned into her well-honed skill set, and launched PortfolioRocket, an executive career consultancy that aims to “end career victimization by elevating, accelerating, and celebrating one executive over 40 at a time.” Obviously, I had to connect with her to discuss how those of us with experience can stand out and demonstrate our value to get the jobs we want and deserve.
Take action and lead your campaign
One of the biggest mindset shifts Loren works with her clients to internalize is making the shift from passive to active. Passive looks like relying on copious applications and recruiters to find a job for you. Active is going deep, beyond the tasks bullet-pointed on your resume, to find the best way to articulate the essential role you played in the all-hands-on-deck emergency events you excelled at.
Look at the outcomes of each event from all the applicable angles. How did the outcome affect the end user, your department, your boss’s time, or the organization as a whole? Until you can get to the truth of the contributions you made, you won’t be able to convince your interviewer to hire you.
“Active” also comes into how you speak about your accomplishments in your interview, Loren explains. Stop speaking in the past tense. They’re hiring you for what you’ll do for them, not what you did for your previous company. Instead, explain how the innovation or vision proven by that past experience is going to bring value to your new employer once you’re in charge. Remember: you’re not there to “take” that job. You’re there to add to it. (When Loren dropped this truth bomb, my jaw dropped!)
Immerse yourself in industry gossip
Knowing which accomplishments and outcomes to lean on comes from eavesdropping on industry conversations. Since they aren’t going to hire you for your completed tasks or your tenure, to prove your value, you need to explain clearly how you’re going to solve their most urgent and expensive problem. If the issue’s not urgent, they might not pull the trigger on you right now. If it’s not costing them buckets, they might just label you“overqualified” so they can justify hiring someone cheaper.
So—find that problem. Dive into the reviews on Glassdoor, scour LinkedIn comments for pain points. Press your ear to the proverbial boardroom wall and identify the disorganization, the financial inefficiency, the employee morale catastrophe, or whatever they’re facing that you have the “unfair advantage” of being able to solve.
Ageism goes both ways
The struggles of one of my clients in particular came to mind when we were talking, and I needed to get Loren’s take. Jenny is a senior leader with 15+ years of experience who looks young. She’s applied for jobs off and on over the past few years but is often left behind in the final round as their second runner-up.
First off, Loren says, it’s good to remember that ageism goes both ways. Someone can assume you’re too young to handle the responsibility or have the experience just as easily as they can assume you’re too old to understand technology or provide any value before you retire. Both can be tricky to tease out from the veiled comments, and both are B.S., of course.
Ageism is also just plain illegal, so Loren advocates for not wasting your time arguing against this line of reasoning. Instead, she tells people in Jenny’s situation to return to the aspects laid out above: redirect the focus of the conversation to how your big idea will make a difference. Use what Loren calls “tomorrow stories.” Say, “I see a gap in [the company’s problematic area]. Here is how I’ll address it.” This is why it’s so important to do that pre-emptive digging into the prevailing problems.
The button that will slaughter your success rate
My chat with Loren is packed with practical gems, and here’s another one: step away from the “Apply Now!” button. Seriously.
Loren estimates that the people who use this “easy application” option on a full-time job search might land one interview in seven months. This approach is just too simple and too crowded. To shove past all the noise from the thousands upon thousands of applications your prospective employer (or their AI agent) has to sift through, stop relying on your resume alone to set yourself apart from the crowd, and take that active approach already mentioned.
Employers might stamp you as “overqualified” if they can’t understand your value from the explanation of your experience, or they worry you’re a flight risk. You can’t read their minds to know which it is, so seek out their glaring problems, frame your experience as future successes, and build relationships wherever you can. If you can prove your value, your spot in the queue of prospective new hires will rise by leaps and bounds.
If you’re currently navigating the weird job market facing just about everyone today, I hope you’ll share your experience! Hop into the Courage Community on Facebook or our group on LinkedIn to commiserate with, uplift, and learn from the good (and frustrated) company you’re in.
Related links from today’s episode:
Episode 523, What Our 2025 Community Survey Reveals About Women, Work, and Burnout
Listen to the “Career Blast in a Half” podcast
Download the “Unlock the Hidden Job Market” ebook
Get HIRED, our job search accelerator packed with practical tips:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 524. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today's episode is for the job seeker who's got a few years under her belt, who is running into the feedback that she is overqualified.
[INTRO MUSIC FADES]
It is a frustrating reality of so many professionals, particularly more seasoned professionals, who are going for those leadership positions and still getting told you are overqualified. So what does that actually mean to be called overqualified? Is it just a veiled form of ageism or is there something else going on?
Joining me to break this down and share her wisdom and advice that is practical and tactical for anyone seeking a job in today's market is Loren Greiff. As Loren likes to say, the traditional job search system wants to keep you small. She discovered this herself when she got PIP’d or put on a performance improvement plan for those unfamiliar for being, quote, “too enthusiastic”, end quote, while working for the most prestigious executive recruiting firm.
But she didn't shrink when she received that feedback. She leapt. Five years later her career consultancy portfolio rocket has helped more than 430 leaders who are 40 plus, learn to navigate the job market differently, not traditionally to land faster and earn more. With over 30,000 followers who tune in for her daily truth telling on LinkedIn, a seat on Fast Company's Executive Board, and as the host of a top global podcast, Career Blast in a Half, Loren's got lots to share because she's not just preaching change, she's leading it. Loren, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
LOREN: Yes. I'm so excited.
EMILIE: Tell us a little bit about how you came to this work as an executive coach.
LOREN: Yeah, accidentally, that's the, that's the cliff note, accidentally. So I had a really fun, crazy, amazing career prior to this because most people don't like, grow up and say, I want to be a recruiter or, you know, I want to do coaching for older people. So, I had a career in advertising. I was really young when I took on some really big responsibilities and had some kids and did the things and my lifestyle changed so I couldn't go back into advertising and be heading to the UK every other week. It was just impossible. And I didn't want to do it either. I'd been there, I'd done that.
And so a friend of mine said to me, I think you'd be a really good recruiter, especially for creatives, because I've been a creative my whole life. And so I was like, well, I don't know what that means. And they're like, just talk to these people. And so, turns out that I was like just swimming in the right pond. I knew the audience of creatives, I knew the audience of hiring managers. And so with that I started on this road which eventually led me to going to work for, and this is a, this is something that I wasn't planning on talking about, but is very important to talk about, which is I ended up going to one of these big corporate, very well known executive search firms.
And the reason why I did that was because, well, first of all, I was recruited, so it was very passive. I was recruited to recruit. And part of what I was thinking in my head was, I should do this for a couple of years because this will give me a lot of that credibility and the resume value, and then, you know, I'll feel better about being able to position myself for future opportunities because now I have this here invisible clout card, right? Somehow I had this idea that, you know, I'd made it because I had this, I had this title, I had this affiliation, I had all these things that were somehow gonna do this. And I'm glad you're sitting down because this is like one of those stories that you think is coming off of Larry David.
EMILIE: So love me some Larry David. So I'm in for it. Okay.
LOREN: Okay. So we had a big, huge placement and we are finally getting to the end. We're waiting on the offer. And in my email back to the hiring manager, I was like, yippee, this is amazing. We're so excited. And I don't know, three, four minutes later, I got the knock [KNOCKING SOUNDS] on my office door and it's my boss and she's like, I'm thinking she's going to congratulate me. I'm like, wow, I'm the bee's knees. And she says, I need to put you on a performance plan. Because that language is very unprofessional and we don't do that around here.
So I'm thinking to myself, like, what language? I'm so like, what do you like, did I inadvertently drop an F bomb? Like, what is going on? And that was on a Friday. And by Monday at 10 o'clock, I did something I have never done in my life because I'm a kind of like long game person. I quit. I quit. I was just like, you know, this is bogus. There's no traceable reason. I got the performance, I've got the this, I've got the that. And so what's up with that? I honestly didn't really come to realize that until more recently. But, you know, you're talking to me. I'm no green, I'm not a green banana. I'm a 61 year old woman who feels and lives like there's just so much that life is happening. And so what ended up, you know, kind of catalyzing this decision to start my business Portfolio Rocket, which is executive career consultancy. And the mission behind it is to end career victimization, to end career victimization by elevating, accelerating, and celebrating one executive over 40 at a time.
EMILIE: I love it. That's so interesting that you share that story because we just wrapped up a listener survey among my podcast listeners. And I felt after reading the data and I actually just put an episode out that kind of reviews all the data. First of all, 70% of our listeners are Gen Xers or millennials. So we're in our 30s and 40s. And I don't know if it's career victimization capturing this feeling, but there's a definite feeling of being stuck. Where we have a lot of responsibilities right now.
We are in the thick of motherhood for those of us who are choosing to be parents. We are in the thick of, like, our some of our highest earning years, or at least trying to make them some of our highest earning years. The economy is putting the pressure on everybody with AI and just continuous transformation and change. And this like, golden handcuffs, prestige problem that you alluded to that I made it, and now I need to keep up this front, this facade, this sort of like, this performance of prestige that I've, I've got going for me can feel heavy.
It's like a heavy load that I can hear my listeners are carrying right now when what they really want is that feeling of freedom that you've described, or feeling of being engaged and like caring and feeling purposeful and fulfilled in their day to day. There's still a ton of ambition here. But finding that sweet spot between our ambition and like, the gifts that we have to share with the world and a company that seems worthy of those gifts to work for is a very hard thing to find.
LOREN: Your listeners cannot see me, like, bobbling my head, right? [LAUGHTER] It's literally everything that you just said, Emilie, it's so heightened, especially in that time of life. I was a single parent, so I remember. Oh, my goodness, right? Craziness. Demand, demand, demand. Please do not sign me up for another demand.
EMILIE: Yeah.
LOREN: I can't.
EMILIE: And then they're thinking, but I don't like my job, so can I even stomach a job search? You know what I mean? Especially one that's so brutal and impersonal and rejection oriented and just filled with slammed doors.
So, you know when in thinking about these highly skilled people looking for work, I mean, you work with executives, you work with folks who have a ton of experience to bring to the table if they haven't been in the job search for a while, like, what are some of the biggest differences that you notice among their experience? Getting back on that saddle, so to speak.
LOREN: So there are a number of through lines. And this also, I just want to preface this by saying, the agency, the control that you have in your job search starts right from the get go from moving to a place of passivity to activity. So, like moving from a lot of the old paradigms, which even if you're a younger person in the marketplace, you've watched your parents, or somehow there's this like, idea that I'm just going to, of course, apply to a million jobs, that the resume is also the messiah, but just, you know, make this thing look better and add another bullet point that recruiters are going to somehow save you. And after being on that side, no can do. And that they are, you know, actively campaigning for you and your search, and they're not doing that either.
So, I've been around the block for a couple of years and what's really happening also in that movement from passive to creator, you are putting yourself in a leadership role. You are already mirroring the kind of leadership that you need to lead for that next role.
EMILIE: Totally. It's so funny, you're really speaking our language here. Because I'm all about being the boss of your career, right? And my, it's, I don't know if you know this, but my background was in political organizing and advocacy. So when you say, you know, this is the campaign for you, whether we're using the campaign from advertising world or grassroots organizing, you better be running your own campaign in this modern job search, right? That's what it is. You're selling you as the solution to the employer's problems, right? Which is a very active position compared to how do I get in touch with the magical recruiter who's going to solve all my problems, right?
LOREN: Right. Or we still hear this. I would take that. Why, why are you even assigning yourself something that you're taking?
EMILIE: Yeah.
LOREN: People aren't looking for you to come in and take something. They're looking for you to add something. I mean, I can share this with you because it's been one of the most powerful, powerful shifts in literally every call that I have. I ask this in questions all over the place. And this isn't designed to be a gotcha. It's designed to give you something to marinate on Emilie's listeners, hi.
But really what it's there to do is help you cut through a lot of the old ideas around the answer to the question, I don't know what to do now. And that puts you back into that passive place. They're not hiring tasks and tenure, right? Those are time stamping activities. And worse, tasks are being replaced by AI. So, low level task, we need to hear about the ones that are more intrinsic to the following question. Here it is.
EMILIE: Okay, I'm ready.
LOREN: I usually tell my people like, get your pen, write it down.
EMILIE: Lay it on me, yeah, I'm ready.
LOREN: What is the urgent and expensive problem you have the unfair advantage to solve?
EMILIE: Say that again one more time.
LOREN: For sure. What is the urgent and expensive problem you have the unfair advantage to solve? So let's break this down. If you're solving a problem that is not urgent, you can't see me again, but I'm twiddling my thumbs [LAUGHTER] someday when, if not that important to my company. So I will keep you on the back burner indefinitely.
EMILIE: Right.
LOREN: If you're not expensive and it's not an expensive problem, right? We're seeing, what is it like $2, $200 Million for Google AI people, something ridiculous like that. Why urgent and expensive, right? Not a lot of people can do that, that job and they don't care how much it costs because it's both. So if you're not solved, if you're solving something urgent but it's not expensive, that's also going to lead them right back into overqualified, right? They're going to be like, oh yeah, well it's urgent. But we can, we can find somebody, somebody who's cheaper to do this.
EMILIE: What if you, I mean, can you give me an example, besides the AI element of like, this is an expensive problem that I'm able to solve.
LOREN: Oh my god. So many expensive problems in healthcare. Lives. Lives, right? We have a lot of people in healthcare, oncology, we have some in alternative medicine. We have also a number of financial services or fintech people. So every industry has them. And the way that you find them, this is really fascinating. The way you find urgent and expensive problems is to tap into the gossip. What are they complaining about on Glassdoor? What are the conversations where they're like, operations around here sucks. You're so disorganized, you know, urgent and expensive problems, slowing down of projects. You know, inefficiencies are time and money. So you really want to keep your nose and your ears out there. Don't think that gossip is bad. Think of it as a good clue.
EMILIE: Oh, for sure. I love gossip. I mean, it is a powerful organizing tool and always has been. And so, okay, so the unfair advantage that you have, can you, can we break that piece down too? Because I love that aspect of it.
LOREN: So short story, if you don't have the urgent, the unfair advantage in that, in this whole three stool, three legged question, right? Urgent, and expensive, and unfair advantage. They'll, they'll hire somebody else. Okay, so why are you the one that brings this? And that could be based off of a number of different factors, right? I have the unfair advantage to solve this unbelievable challenge around ageism because I believe now in 2020 hindsight, the “yippee” had nothing to do with me. It was like, whoa, you don't look the way we want our team to look when we're hiring for direct to consumer brands like, Glossier Makeup, or Away Luggage, or Lululemon. You don't act this part. You're not a digital native.
EMILIE: Yeah. Which is such coded ageist language. But it is pretty coded, isn't it? So when I was thinking about the unfair advantage question, it reminds me of how much confidence is required to answer that and say, look, the culmination of my lived experiences have made me uniquely positioned to have these strengths, to have these assets to offer the world. That takes a lot of confidence, a lot of like, ability to see yourself in the most positive way.
You mentioned career victimization in the beginning, and I want to come back to that because so many people say, I'll settle for that. I'll take this because I feel victimized at my current job. I want out. You know? I'm not feeling like I'm leading with my, this like, asset based lens. I'm more like, I'll take whatever. Here's what I can offer. People don't feel uniquely valuable, right? Like, they don't feel like there isn't a better person out there. So how do you help someone go from that mindset of like, I'm good at my job, I'm not the best person in the world for this position, but I'm pretty good. To feeling like no, this is my unique, unfair advantage. How do you get there with someone who doesn't innately have that self confidence?
LOREN: This is such an important question. It's important not just because it's a mindset shift, because most people think that going through their accomplishments or their wins or whatever, whatever that is, is navel gazing, right? They're like, oh like I actually have to like take credit for these things. Or some people take way too much credit. There's like some kind of, you know, imbalance there.
But you really need to think about. And this is not a hard exercise and it doesn't take forever. But what I really want you to think about is all those times in your current, you know, job life that it was all hands on deck. You've got this 911 and what role did you play? I want you to think about how you stack, how the new initiatives are coming into you, urgent and expensive. Because if it's not important, it's just going to go right on the back burner. So you can start to build that hierarchy yourself, but you can't do it by noodling on your resume.
EMILIE: Totally. Yeah.
LOREN: You need to get into the truth, right? The truth of what contribution you brought to that and what was the overall impact based off of that contribution? So please don't stop short. Don't go, oh, yeah, I did this, who cares, right? Make sure that you start looking at it from all the different angles. And some of those angles could be, how did this impact my end user? How did this impact the department that I was in? How did this change my boss's life? Oh, we were recognized as such and such. And how did this make a larger impact or footprint within the organization, right?
Back in the day, I remember I was working on, I mean, this is so old. I mean, they had just started QR codes and my company was, I was working on behalf of Walgreens and like all day long we were, we were trying to figure out, like, how can we make this purchase problem faster. I mean, I know this sounds like, dark ages.
EMILIE: It's not that old. I mean, I feel, am I crazy? I don't think QR codes are that old. I think they're pretty new.
LOREN: Right. And so, who were the people that we were going to be able to recruit that were going to be able to design this and that? And guess what? They're still using that flipping QR code today.
EMILIE: That's so funny, yeah.
LOREN: So we want to also take advantage of the compound impact that that has had. And to date, we are still using this. So that's why I don't just stop short right at what you did. I also want to know what it's still doing.
EMILIE: Yeah. And I think that's a really great challenge for the listener because by forcing someone to take stock of the impact their work has had, not only does that translate well to the audience who's listening, right? To the interviewer who's interviewing you or the person who's reading your resume, but it translates well for yourself to feel like, look, let me get real with myself.
LOREN: When I say you need to own it. Of course you need to own it. Right? Like, duh. But now you need to emanate it. I want you to wear it. I don't want you to just see it over there.
EMILIE: Yeah. Well, it's so funny. As we've been talking, I've been thinking about one job seeker in particular, Jenny, who might be listening. Hi, Jenny. Jenny and I have been working together for years in a variety of different capacities because she's an accomplished leader. She's been on the job search intermittently over the past five plus years. She's been the second runner up time and again for these senior leadership positions.
And there's definitely some interesting age stuff happening here because someone like Jenny, who's a pretty experienced professional, has at least 15, if not more years of experience under her belt. And she looks really young. So she gets like, multiple mixed messages I think, when it comes to translating her leadership experience on her resume to that leadership presence that people are looking for. And she's constantly being told she's overqualified. So I wanted to ask you about her case in particular. What would you advise to someone like Jenny, who is kind of struggling to land the senior leader roles, that she is qualified for, that she knows she's qualified for, but she's struggling to make that case persuasively?
LOREN: This whole idea of ageism and as it relates to being overqualified is this annoying problem that I spend a lot of time thinking about. And ageism also affects younger people too. Not just because they're going to age, right? Duh. Because younger-ism is a subset of ageism judgment around either number of years or some perception that you have this adorable little baby face and now, you know, how could people listen to you and take you seriously? Or of course, on the other end, which is you're older and now you're not tech savvy, right?
So they both come with a lot of thorns. Either one, right And they prick and they hurt. And worst of all, I just did this post the other day. The most idiotic thing, or I call it strategic stupidity, is it benefits nobody, right? It doesn't like, make the company more money by keeping either end of the spectrum or someplace in the middle of, you know, of talent. I mean, multigenerational, cross generational, whatever you, that's the s*** right? You learn from me, I learn from you. We're great. We are a great team. Like, I don't get this. You get this. I don't know how to read the room, but you do help me understand what that means. Like all of this kind of. That's the strength. That's the strength. And so the situation in Jenny's case, right? I want to get back to you. Jenny is, first of all, I really want you to ignore comments about your age or your youth that, first of all, it's illegal. You're not going to be able to spend. You're not there to spend your time trying to, you know, mitigate that. It's illegal.
EMILIE: It's also hard to suss it out too, because it's never that explicit like that term around being a digital native. You know what I mean?
LOREN: There's usually some hints here and there. You know, there's, there’s some hints, right? Oh you'd be too young to want to know who that band is.
EMILIE: This was before your time. Yes.
LOREN: Like something super innocuous.
EMILIE: Well, and Jenny just, she just presents young too. Like she just looks young. And so that's just. It's not even real age. It's perceived. And I always say for women in particular, you're only too young until you're too old. There's like no perfect age for women, right?
LOREN: Completely. So I just want you to like, block out the noise. And what I really want your case building to be about is, again, not what you did. If you're moving into leadership, that's assumed, right? Whatever the bulk of your responsibilities are, that comes with your job, right? That just comes with it. Now what I really want you to think about is where you are driving a level of vision, and/or innovation, and/or places. Yes. You're like high fiving because you're like. Oh, please, please. Right?
EMILIE: Vision. Vision. Vision, yes, I harp on that constantly.
LOREN: And vision, like, from my standards or from my lens, is you being able to say and come forward, this goes back to that creator. I see a hole or a gap in such, and such, and such, and such. And here is where we can really address a need in order to drive whatever bigger outcome is there.
EMILIE: I had a VP say to me recently, here's the vision I shared with the CEO, and that's why he hired me for this role. He said, go make that happen. I love that vision. Make it happen. And there's audacity required, right? Like, especially as an outsider, to have the audacity to go to an interview and say, here's the gap I see from what little information I have.
LOREN: But aren't all leaders embracing risk?
EMILIE: Yeah, and you're taking some risk. You're sticking your neck out, you're saying, here's the gaps I see, here's what I would do. And then you're like, oh, shoot, pressure's on, I gotta go deliver this. But that's like, that's the next problem to overcome. [LAUGHTER]
LOREN: Yes. So the audacity is true. And same with the previous exercise, which is like, going through and really building, building your knowledge bank. Really study that, study that, like a thesis study like, what would be the risk? What would be the rewards? Why should we do this? What would be the upside? What would be the aggregate, you know, ROI if we try this for the next, you know, five years? What are the challenges that are happening in my industry?
And please, the more you start examining it from the perspective of not I deserve it, I've been here so long, I have this number of experiences, right? Relevance says, I know how to navigate no matter what the waters are. Experience says, I did this and I have a timestamp around it. And nobody cares about that because, I mean, we all have experience with something and after a certain period of time, if you've been in the workforce since college, you have that experience as cost of entry. Everybody else does too. That doesn't make you qualified and it doesn't differentiate you either.
EMILIE: Well, yeah, and when you say relevance too, it just reminds me that, look, every single person and company that's hiring is self-interested. Like, what's in it for me to hire you? Like, what's in it for me? How is hiring you gonna solve a problem for me? And that needs to be a very explicitly made case, right?
LOREN: And really to, to, it's unsaid and unspoken, but basically what you're saying is, hey, I'm going to let you do your thing and I'm going to bring value here. Don't even worry about this. I'm not saying I don't need your help and support in making this happen, but I'm taking the lead and I'm not waiting for something to happen. I am in this position and looking at it as a business owner, not as an employee.
EMILIE: Taking accountability and like, taking that responsibility. I love that. So what do you think it means when people run into that term overqualified? We kind of glossed over this at the beginning. But if people are getting that feedback in their job search that you're overqualified, which is exasperating feedback to get, right? You're like, well, then why the h*** am I here? Like, well, I'm not, you know, I'm not getting any other interviews.
LOREN: I'm still qualified. I can't believe I heard this right? So I'm just going to make a play for this because it really is. First thing is stop with the apply now, please.
EMILIE: Yeah.
LOREN: So you're going to get that because the filters are filtering for that. So your ROI is a big point zero two percent. And also what this translates to is if you were doing your job search full time, 40 hours a week, you might get an interview in seven months. So, you can keep doing that if you like getting told you're overqualified.
EMILIE: That's sobering.
LOREN: Yeah. So that's rough.
EMILIE: So you're saying that the online applications alone are just not sufficient, right?
LOREN: They're not sufficient. They're only getting more, more congested as AI becomes the primary. And it's a copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy. And now you commoditized yourself. So the easiest response to any of this is, you're bumping up against our filters. And we've seen this a million times, bye, you're overqualified.
I mean, in some respects, we're setting ourselves up for that if we do it. Because I'm telling you right now, I mean, believe me or not, don't believe me. But my point is, is that this is really eroding a lot of confidence and inviting massive levels of frustration and powerlessness.
EMILIE: Absolutely. And so what is the alternative path?
LOREN: The alternative path, and let me, let me just. I don't even know which way to go first, right? Do I talk about that? Do I talk about this? The alternative path is build those relationships. Long story short. 100%, all day long, you can talk about that. So overqualified is going to come in. If you do this. Now, you know, stay away or as my friend would say, step away from the vehicle. [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Step away from the easy apply button. Yeah.
LOREN: Correct. I am not a fan. I have never seen it really pan out. Maybe one in a million. But you could play the lottery and, you know, present the same odds. Someone's going to win someday.
EMILIE: Yeah. Job seekers, take note, buy a lottery ticket. It's just as likely. [LAUGHTER]
LOREN: Yeah, exactly. Overqualified, the top three fears that live underneath this umbrella called overqualified are the following. So, it is a placeholder that covers up these three fears. The first one is that we don't understand your value, right? We just don't get it. So it's not that you're overqualified, it's that you're undervaluing what your experience is in concert with what the value is that they are putting out there. Whether that value is articulated on a job description through other intel that you are pulling together, research, etc. So that's the first thing. It's just easy, right? We don't see it, so we'll just call you overqualified.
The second one is we think you're a flight risk. And flight risk meaning we don't think you're going to stay with us for an extended period of time. That could be on the younger-ism side of life. It could be, not as much anymore. Depends on the industry. Like in tech, if you stay six months, you're a legend.
EMILIE: [LAUGHTER] A whole six months. My god. Yeah.
LOREN: Or, you know, there are people that, you know, have a lot of job hopping. I don't think job hopping is a bad thing. I think you could spin that and saying, yeah, I, like I can learn new systems all day long. So you want to be careful to make assumptions that that's what it means. But it always is hiding underneath one of these. And a flight risk in those cases could be you haven't been promoted. And so, we don't think that you really have what it takes.
It could be, you know, we think that if you were in that position and you weren't promoted again after a year, you would leave. So on the older end of the spectrum, it's somebody writing a ridiculous script around, we think you're going to retire at a certain age and that's not necessarily true either. So you have to watch out.
EMILIE: It goes to show how many different assumptions could be at play. And what does somebody do with that? Like, you're like, look, I'm 63, I'm looking for a job, and I'm getting overqualified, overqualified, overqualified. You know, like, I need a job still. Like, how do you overcome these. These assumptions and these stories that people have in their minds, especially if they're unarticulated, if they're unconscious?
LOREN: The first one that's very important as a workaround to overqualify or even younger-ism as being overqualified is, I really encourage you, I mean, I cannot emphasize this enough is please, please, please, please, please stop talking about your experience with an ED at the end. I sold, I led, I conducted, I navigated, right? Every time you put things in the past tense, what you're telling them, aside from developing your own little professional obituary, is that you are not here for their future.
EMILIE: Yeah.
LOREN: So we want to use tomorrow stories, and tomorrow stories do what I referenced earlier, where they take something, and take something that you've done and then bring it into the present and the future.
EMILIE: Your vision for how you'd apply that here, right? I love that.
LOREN: Doesn't matter which thing. They will not be hiring you for what you did in the past. Always bring the past and leverage it. Anything that you've done probably has some lifeline. Were you part of an RFP where you brought in the CRM? Yeah. You were, are they still using it? Yes.
Did you, you know, run an ad campaign? And even if it didn't get sold, did you still work every weekend in order to do that? And that team is still people that are, you know, helping you in your world today. And you're a relationship builder, right? And you're out there. I mean, there's so many ways to think about it, to spin that and also to really get away from, I'm a seasoned executive with 20 years of proven experience.
EMILIE: I love that so much. Amazing, Loren. Well, you've already given us so much to think about. Thank you, first of all, for sharing your expertise on this. Where can my listeners jump in to even more that you have to offer? I know you've got your own podcast. Why don't we start there?
LOREN: Okay, so first of all, I'm a big fat LinkedIn nerd, so you can always find me on LinkedIn. I write content pretty much every day. I know, because I like writing. And I also just think it's super cool. Loren. L O R E N. Just saying, G, R, E, I F, F. And so you can check that out. I have also my podcast Career Blast in a Half, so I call out a lot of outdated and b******. Old career advice. Shocker. And you could definitely check that out, too, on all Apple and Spotify, and that's the deal. Thank you.
EMILIE: You want to mention the URL of your website, too?
LOREN: Oh, sure. PortfolioRocket.com and all kinds of goodies, freebies, downloads. Actually, there's a download there that covers this overqualified piece.
EMILIE: Awesome. I will link directly to that in today's show notes. And you're primarily serving like VP’s and executives when it comes to your.
LOREN: BPs, execs, C-suiters, transition, people who are, or, you know, sadly, people who might be, you know, on the verge of a layoff, or see it coming, or all of that.
EMILIE: Yeah. Which is unfortunately common. Not too rare at this time. Well, Loren, thank you so much. I will drop links to all of those great resources in today's show notes for our listeners to dig into. And I just want to thank you again for being here. It's been such a pleasure.
LOREN: You're a great host. You're a great.
EMILIE: Oh thanks, I try. [LAUGHTER]
LOREN: You're super fun, super fun to talk to. I just like, like to laugh with you and just, like, yeah. And thank you for all you do.
EMILIE: Oh, thank you so much. For links to all the resources Loren and I just shared, head to bossedup.org/episode524. That's bossedup.org/episode524. There you will also find a summary blog post highlighting today's key takeaways, as well as a full written transcript, if that's your thing.
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And now I want to hear from you. If you're navigating this weird moment in the job market, I want to hear about your experience. Let's keep the conversation going as always in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, and together let's lift as we climb.
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