​Here’s a photo I took this past weekend in York, Maine. It shows the Cape Neddick “Nubble” Lighthouse at sunrise. Now you may think: Well, this is sublimely beautiful, but what in the world does it have to do with career services?

The hot summer weather makes many of us slow down. What many don’t realize is that this slowdown also includes cognitive performance. A recent NPR story reported this, referencing a Harvard University study: As the mercury rises, our cognitive faculties may plummet.
 
You may be alarmed by this news, especially if you have been staying in work mode this summer, keeping up your career efforts. No reason to despair, though: As long as you manage to be in air-conditioned places, you stay sharp.
 
Then again, is that really always for the best? I don’t even mean your electric bill soaring as you keep the AC running. What I mean is: Could there be a benefit to the natural slowdown that comes with the summer—some benefit to have you emerge all the more recharged?
 
Perhaps it is no accident that summer is a typical time for vacations. People hit the pause button, switch channels—feed their minds something of a completely different quality.
 
Give your career a rest…add to that just one letter, and “rest” becomes “reset.”
 
That may have been the effect it had when I took in that sunrise that morning. A sunrise is a slow, deliberate event; to me it carries compatibility with the notion of things slowing down in the summer. (And there was novelty to the sunrise in this case, because I had never been to Maine before.)
 
So there came the dawn—literally, for one, but maybe not just literally: I had been struggling for fresh ideas in a project I was working on. Stepping away from it all may have helped me get unstuck: It allowed the dust to settle, and as I approached the project again with a fresh set of eyes, I saw not only the trees but also the forest.
 
If you are in a place where your professional world won’t come crashing down if you take a week (or just a day, whatever) to give it a res[e]t, then my question for you is: Got any plans for the rest of the summer?
 
The “Nubble” Lighthouse sunrise seems to have done it for me. Actually, it was not just me—there were at least five more photographers there that morning!

In the movie American Beauty, the main character—Lester Burnham—quits his lucrative-ish but antagonizing inside-sales position, and sets out to apply for the entry-level job of all entry-level jobs: flipping burgers. Of course the burger-joint manager is baffled, and tells Lester he doesn't see this as a good fit. Unfazed, Lester points out how the manager’s judgment is misguided.

Granted, this scenario is hyperbole, like so much in American Beauty. Even so, the reality is: people do pursue jobs they are overqualified for, all the time.
 
How about you? Have you laid eyes on a job opening but not applied in the end because you thought you would be passed over for being overqualified? Are you at that kind of crossroads right now? Or have you perhaps already gone through the frustration of being rejected specifically for being overqualified?
 
First, put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes.
 
The concerns on an employer’s part are understandable, whether they are based on common sense or on preconceived notions. That, too, is the reality of the situation. At the same time, there are various ways to neutralize the “overqualified” label, or even turn it around to work in your favor.
 
Your résumé may be the place to start.
 
Talk about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure! Of course you are proud of your accomplishments, but it may be better to hold back so you look like a good fit. Much as this may feel like severing your own limbs, it might be a good idea to leave some things off your résumé.
 
A Certified Professional Résumé Writer will work with you on what to emphasize, what to deemphasize, and how to shuffle your assets. You will still be “found out” eventually, but a strategically designed résumé is more likely to get you an interview, and when that happens, it will be much easier to address the “overqualified” concern.
 
“Hm hm, I am overqualified…and that is a problem because…?”
 
Take the bull by the horns. Of course you are overqualified. Why is that a bad thing, though? Let the interviewer point out specific concerns; get them to put their finger on something beyond the vague negative connotation of “overqualified.” The interviewer will probably come up with one or more of the following.
 
—You will certainly get bored, and not last long.
 
“Oh, I see what you mean. Let me put your mind at ease: I understand there are a lot of new things to learn for me here. As long as I can keep learning something new, I won’t get bored.”
 
—It could be a problem that you know more than your supervisor does.
 
“How so? I imagine my supervisor would rather have a resourceful new hire; someone who gets where management is coming from, who will have their back, who won’t require constant supervision, and who is regarded as competent by clients. Been there, done that.
 
“What is certainly true is that I bring the potential for growing with your company. I will be there when the right opportunity for advancement comes along, so I can take my contributions to the next level.”
 
—The salary we can offer probably won’t be enough for you.
 
That one is a bit trickier, but your answer might go something like this:
 
“Oh, I am not too worried about that. I have done my research on what this type of position realistically pays. If that were an issue, I wouldn’t have applied. I appreciate you for bringing that up, though. What is the salary range you have budgeted for this position?”
 
What else?

Oh, yes—Lester Burnham. He did get that job flipping burgers. And if you have seen American Beauty, then you know that job was the one Lester would have for the rest of his life.

As with all things related to job search, applications, and interviewing, there are always subtle “tectonic shifts” that see trends come and go. A fad enters the scene, it seems to work for a while, until it wears itself out after everybody and their brother has jumped on it.

One such trend was injecting “oddball questions” into the interview, such as: “How many Ping-Pong balls can you fit in a jet airliner?” Of course no interviewer in their right mind expected you to come up with a definitive answer. The idea behind those oddball questions was something like this:

In every job, there will be oddball situations coming at you every once in a while. How do you deal with that: Do you get defensive (“What the &*$# does that have to do with anything??”) or do you acknowledge, even welcome the oddball question as an opportunity to show your capacity for outlining the path to a solvable problem: “First of all, are we taking the seats out? Are we filling the kerosene tanks as well? (…)”

You get the idea. And while those typical oddball questions have been on the wane, the underlying premise remains: Every so often, we all are faced with something we don’t know, and have to find out about. In the above example of the Ping-Pong balls, it is quite obvious you wouldn’t really have to know that. But what if the interview question does have bearing on the job you are interviewing for, such as: “How would you go about in developing this niche market in our new sales territory?”

I wouldn’t have a definitive answer to that one. For starters, I would need more information—read up on the demographics of that new territory, consult with existing area sales directors and field sales reps about what has been working thus far, etc. I would relate all that in my answer to that question, so the interviewer would know I was capable of defining and framing the problem, and resourceful enough to formulate steps to tackle the challenge.

Another way of looking at it: If any interview candidate were able to hand the interviewer a definitive answer on a silver platter, then the interviewer might respond (or at least think): “Great! Now we can do it ourselves!”

Really, it is okay not to know something (as long as it’s not like you don’t know anything—duh!). When you don’t know something, what matters is you show the interviewer how excited you are to put your nose to the grindstone. Maybe you can inject a story about how you have handled a similar learning curve before.

I have made some choices in my life that I now second-guess. Please don’t ask about specifics; sharing them would still be—to put it charitably—too embarrassing for me. I will say, though, that (fortunately) none of those choices has ever gotten me into trouble with the law. There are no laws against just being immature, unwise, or naïve. Lucky me.

Past choices are…well, in the past.

Choices I have made in the past don’t define the type of person I am today, or will be tomorrow. (And that includes the choices that turned out to be good ones; good choices in the past only mean so much with regard to choices now or in the future.)

In my daytime job at the North Shore Career Center, last week saw the graduation of a cohort of reentrants from a series of custom-tailored workshops. In case you are not familiar with the designation “reentrants,” it denotes people also known as “court-involved individuals” or “persons with criminal records.” Until recently, common designations have also included “ex-cons” and “ex-felons.”

Those would be people who, like me, have made some choices in their lives that they now second-guess. On top of that, however, they have had the added misfortune of breaking the law somewhere along the line. The consequences of that misfortune include public exposure (in court, and oftentimes also in the media) and a public record that is going to stay with them.

So what if your past affects the quality of your brand?

What applies to me applies to reentrants just the same: Choices they have made in the past don’t define the type of person they are today, or will be tomorrow. Not-so-good choices in the past only mean so much with regard to choices now or in the future.

That’s where specially designed workshops come in.

Understandably, reentrants often feel labeled—dare we say: “branded”?—by their criminal record and incarceration. When they come to the Career Center, it often is with a feeling of a sticky note on their foreheads saying something like “ex-offender.”

But that’s not even what cuts to the quick at times. Over the years, several participants have confided in us that our series of workshops for reentrants was the first thing they had ever “completed” in their lives. One participant went a step further and said she “found hope again.” That stuck with me; she had already lost hope—that which supposedly dies last.

We address these participants as the professionals they are. We probe—with the help of appropriate assessment tools, and through individual counseling—where strengths and inclinations may lie, and what positions or career paths seem like good ones to explore further. (That includes info about your record on application forms, and employers open to candidates with a record.)

We collaboratively design a job-search campaign emphasizing relevant assets.

A central, recurring theme in our workshops for reentrants is resilience. It involves acknowledging what happened in the past, and devising a strategy to move on.

Once a line of work to zero in on is identified, I am one of the main contributors in creating a fresh, new résumé. That new résumé is going to emphasize qualities that present the individual as a capable, reliable professional. And when I look at the résumé once it’s done, it strikes me time and time again how the criminal record in a person’s past is completely absent from the presentation of his or her qualifications for a future job.

Things don’t end at the résumé, of course. Plenty of practice time is given to discussing your record in the interview conversation, where the subject might come up following the interviewer’s mention of how the company routinely does background checks. At that point, it is important for the candidate to be able to tell his or her story and sound natural, so as to convince the interviewer that was an episode in the past that has been dealt with and moved on from.

And it takes a big person to open up about those darker facets of one’s past. Remember I alluded to choices of mine that I now second-guess? I have the option to remain comfortable in choosing not to discuss details. People with a criminal record must step outside their comfort zone, and address unpleasant details. If that doesn’t say something about their readiness for new challenges, then I don’t know what does.

Imagine you are at a massive networking function at some large venue, where over time the people in attendance form clusters of sorts, depending on factors such as industry, location, and what they are looking for (clients; talent; business partners; investors; etc.). So far, so good.

Now imagine there are some “Me! Me! Me!” networkers among the people in attendance: people who ricochet in and out of small-group conversations, talking about nothing but themselves and what they do—in fact, doing pretty much all the talking. Those people approach everyone in exactly the same way, regardless of the other person’s need or background. Finally, those people throw business cards around touting what they want everyone to buy from them.

Do those “Me! Me! Me!” networkers sound like grotesque caricatures? Well, in brick-and-mortar networking, the only environment where I have come across anything close to that was car sales. The sales trainer in my group of trainees suggested you get yourself known in the neighborhood by placing business-card dispensers at every imaginable local business from the dry cleaner’s to the hairdresser’s to the dentist’s.

I never acted on that “sage advice” (I wouldn’t have, even if I had lasted any longer than three months in that line of work), and I can’t think of too many car salespeople who do. They, too, generally have more common sense than that.

How certain online “networking” goes really bad

Content management in the digital sphere is fascinating, even wondrous. Today content can be posted and sent out to practically unlimited numbers of recipients, at speeds and volumes that would have been unheard of just a generation ago.

And some people take that as license to hound down unsuspecting targets anywhere and everywhere. I don’t do a lot besides LinkedIn and Twitter in the social-media arena, but I have enough presence to find myself antagonized by obnoxious self-promotion every so often.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the kind of networking that gets people to think of you when they have a need for your product or service. What makes networking good is when it also includes offering something for free. (I wrote about that in detail in another blog post.)

Where things become obnoxious is when they approach you by making a faux personal “connection” (such as a generic compliment on your website or LinkedIn profile), and when you do connect with them, they message you on LinkedIn to pitch their product or service, and flood you with “newsletters” and “special promotions” you never signed up for.

And that’s where these online networkers are just like the caricature “Me! Me! Me!” brick-and-mortar networkers I made up above: all talk, no listen. As for online networking, much of it may not happen in the form of live, real-time conversations, but there certainly remains the need to “listen.” And if they don’t get that, then it’s “unsubscribe” and “unfollow”!