20190619.0430

This date has seen five previous posts to this webspace, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. It is the first of them that attracts my attention as I look back over things again, the first that suggests itself as still the most relevant to me. In it, I react to an article that argues being over-educated for a first job has negative consequences throughout a career; while I was not overeducated for my first jobs by any means, I have found that, even well after my first, I read as overeducated for most purposes; it is hard for me and for those like me to get jobs other than those for which we are ostensibly trained because we are seen as dangers to higher-ups or poised to seek elsewhere at any time.
Admittedly, my present job does not look at me so, but that is something of a special case. I was hired with the explicit understanding that I would assume a leadership role in my present organization, and I am set to do so at the beginning of September. For that, my advanced education was seen as an asset, and my current supervisor continues to extoll it. And it has helped me to do a fair bit of what has needed doing as I have worked my current work and trained to take on the new work that I expect is coming; I am not certain I'd be doing so well in it as I am did I not have the background in taking in and synthesizing information that I do.
Again, though, it is a rare case. When I was on the job market, I ran into a number of companies for which hiring practice more or less automatically excluded me from consideration. When I would apply for other-than-entry-level positions, I would be rejected because I was not seen as having the experience asked for by the position. Evidently years of teaching writing and being an active scholar does not read as equivalent to years of writing work, at least not to the automated systems frequently deployed by employers. At the same time, when, following the suggestions of those systems, I applied to entry-level jobs, I was rejected as being other than an entry-level applicant; years in the workforce and the cluster of letters at the end of my name quashed such ideas. And leaving the letters off...lying by omission is reason to rescind a job offer.
I am in a position now where I am involved in hiring; I will be taking a position where I will do the hiring. I have already seen a candidate's application that made me ask "Why would this one want a position here?" I know it may seem strange that I would ask such a question; the applicant's credentials and location against the job for which the application was made merit it. Unlike many, though, I believe that there is and answer, and a good one; my own experience tells me I need to at least wait to hear it before I make any kind of determination about hiring or not.