HR Business Partner Victoria Zakharova shared the story of a candidate who was rejected because he was overqualified for one of the vacancies, and asked the IT community whether its representatives often encountered similar cases in their careers.
HR Business Partner Victoria Zakharova shared the story of a candidate who was rejected because he was overqualified for one of the vacancies, and asked the IT community whether its representatives often encountered similar cases in their careers.
«A candidate came to me for a consultation with this. He says: this has completely finished me off. I have completely stopped understanding what is happening with the market. I have invested so much in development, studied, and improved my skills. And now it has become a minus? What does this mean? That highly qualified specialists are no longer needed? That I now have to work for three kopecks?», — the recruiter quoted the words of one of the candidates on her LinkedIn page.
Victoria Zakharova asked colleagues from the IT community whether the definition of overqualified really corresponds to reality, and whether it is possible to somehow avoid such situations. Batato IT workers answered that they had also encountered something similar in their practice, and some even explained the reasons for the employer’s refusal.
«In the last few interviews after the final rounds, I got exactly this — like you won’t have such development here, we are impressed by your knowledge… Now I’m silent about my experience as a developer, and the fact that I served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine too. Because I don’t know what I didn’t like. It all drives me a little depressed. A person needs a job, and it shows his skills. I don’t understand anything either, I’m moving on… I think they want to hire a slave for the position of a June with middling skills for a salary of a cleaner of 300-400 bucks…», — shared his experience QA automation specialist Maksym Podoliak .
«I received such assessments several times, and it was always an assessment of the resume, not the interview. I was not upset at all, I understand perfectly well where the legs grow from. This is a ridiculous formulation invented by the employer to bring down expectations from the salary, HR and employers have been doing this for the past 2 years. Of course, if the resume has a lot of experience, the candidate will almost certainly be invited,» says Senior C/C++ Software Engineer Vadim Yashchenko .
«I heard this from someone else. In my opinion, the analogy with nails and a microscope is quite suitable here. If a business has a need that a Middle specialist with the appropriate financial request and ambitions for growth can completely cover, why hire a Senior specialist with the appropriate ambitions (primarily professional) that the business is unlikely to cover?» says Talent Acquisition Specialist Andriy Khomenko .
Some IT people, however, see this situation as completely normal and are not looking for any «pitfalls» here.
«In general, this is a normal answer. Taking on an overqualified person is always a risk for the company. Such a person is unlikely to be motivated by current tasks. Because they will no longer be able to grow on such tasks. I imagine that now they may refuse this more often, because more people with different levels agree to look for work at lower levels solely in order to simply find a job,» says QA Team Lead Petro Tarasenko .
We have previously analyzed similar situations. In particular, recruiter Yulia Lozynska argued why she considers the rejection of experienced candidates applying for a position with lower requirements to be a valid reason.
