A theory I have heard: if say a person with a master’s applies at Safeway, they will be less inclined to hire them than someone with a bachelor’s or high school diploma. The theory is that the more educated person will jump ship the second something better comes along, and thus is a riskier hire.
Is it considered ethical to completely omit a degree from your resume? I find myself now with an “employment deficit” and for various reasons will not be pursuing my narrowly focused career path, at least at this time. When applying to temp agencies or less advanced jobs, should I/could leave degrees off? What would be the max to list (generally; depending on the job of course), a bachelor’s?
Well go back to the basic 4 things an interviewer will want to know:
What is your experience?
Will you get along with others at this job?
How long will you stay?
What will you cost them?
Now looking at the above, #2 and #3. You probably wont get along since you will think you are better than everyone and #3. you will always be looking for a better job.
Great idea. The stigma attached with going to school does dissuade many employers. It’s a good reason to have a job while you are going to school just for circumstances like this.
For an actual job manning the cash register at Safeway, I’d be surprised someone even needs a resume.
If you mean jobs that someone would be vastly overqualified for, then yes, the issue is that managers will worry that you’ll jump ship for something better as soon as you can (and hiring is expensive). There’s also the worry that you’ll try to buck trends and overengineer anything that needs to be done instead of just putting your head down and do the work. Or that you won’t get along with your undereducated workmates. Now, you can find about a million articles about “why overqualified isn’t a thing” or “the overqualified candidate might be the best”, but all those are generally written by recruiters that have a financial incentive to place a candidate, so I imagine they’re of questionable integrity.
For your actual question, there’s nothing unethical about leaving something off your resume - I do it all the time. Nobody thinks they need to include their burger flipping job in high school on their resume when they’re applying for VP of marketing, right? The issue that comes up is if you didn’t do anything else at the time (or you did something that was obviously related to your master’s), and now you have a 1-2 year gap to explain on your resume when you apparently weren’t doing anything. You might be able to explain that away in the interview, but the problem is that you probably won’t even get the interview with a gap like that.
Generally, although I’ve been flamed when I suggested this elsewhere, if you’re overqualified for the positions you’re applying to, the problem is that you’re applying to the wrong positions.
You are not required to add information to your resume, only to tell the truth on it.
I finally started getting interviews when I stopped telling people I had a degree. I now have a permanent job at a decent employer where I have since discovered several other people hired in the last couple years also “forgot” to mention they had degrees when applying.
Yeah, sure, we’d all like something “better” but after a couple years of chronic un-and-underemployment our apps and resumes were routinely hitting the round file for job we were allegedly more qualified for. We needed jobs and we got them.
Meanwhile, I think I can work my way up from this entry-level spot into something more lucrative in a couple years, where saying “Hey, I have a degree!” might work to my advantage again.
The problem is when there are fewer jobs than job applicants. No one was willing to pay my rent and utilities while I was looking for a “correct” rather than a “wrong” position so I had to get some sort of employment or be homeless. You may not have noticed, but the nation recently went through an episode where the same applied to tens of millions of people who were suddenly laid off.
I have the advantage of having picked up an associate’s degree on the way to my BS, so I have a “middle ground” choice that I can use to apply for positions for which a bachelor’s degree is considered overkill but that still require proof of basic literacy.
I also found out that the local community college will give me a second associate’s degree if I take a single three-credit class. If I were really in a pickle, I could do that to get a recent associate’s degree and perhaps make a hiring manager make an ass out of himself and me hypothesizing that “Associate of Arts, General Studies, 2015” means that I’m probably in my early 20’s and still a spry young man.
And when there are more jobs than applicants, they don’t care - you quit after two weeks because you found something better - that was two weeks they had one more person. The Target here puts you alone on a register after an hour of supervision (it isn’t like scanning is too hard)
That could be the worst part of this. They might be happy to find someone who can speak properly, add without a calculator, and has the discipline to get a degree, but then they’ll think you’ll leave at the first opportunity, or expect a raise, or that you might be after their job. I doubt they have any real concern that you’ll be unhappy with your job outside of things like that.
Your resume is a glamour shot of your education and career. As long as you don’t put something untruthful onto the page, you can pick and choose whatever you want to highlight your accomplishments. Yes, leave off your advanced degree if you’re applying at a place where it would hinder your consideration. Unless you’re fresh out of college, your resume should not include every single thing you’ve done up until now. There’s only so much you can say in 1 page.
However, if you are asked to submit a written career and educational history after your interview/before a job offer, *that *is where you don’t want to risk leaving anything out. If your resume is a glamour shot, your history is a high-res nude picture that includes every crevice of your ass. At a grocery store or McDonald’s, leaving off your master’s degree is an omission that may not ever be discovered. But if you’re applying for a job in, say, law enforcement or high finance (where they do comprehensive background checks prior to employment), **do not omit anything **when they ask for your history.
Uh-huh :rolleyes:. If you go to grad school because you “think you are better,” you’re doing it wrong. Unless it’s an MBA, it generally will delay your earning potential for a few years.
Or wherever else :). But they probably have the equivalent in fillable form version. I joke that now I’m qualified to work at Jack in the Box instead of McDonald’s.
The issue is also: leaving off old jobs is fine because you want to keep it short (BTW: I’ve never done HR but I understand the 1 page resume is no longer a hard limit. Just keep it shorter than your 10+ page CV). But two jobs with different experience requirements might need you to leave off different things.
I have the gap thing covered, I think. Thank you assistanceships and teaching.
I don’t live in Detroit, but yes one of the bottom job markets in the US.
It depends on the job- in SOME businesses, managers expect a lot of turnover, and won’t necessarily hold it against you if you’re on the lookout for something better.
A lot depends on these factors:
1) How much time and money would the employer have to invest in training you?
That is, if you already have experience as (for example) a bartender or cashier, and can step right into a new job withouit missing a beat, your chances of getting hired are better than if you’d have to spend a few weeks getting up to speed.
2) How soon might you leave?
Right now, a lot of retail stores are starting to hire because Halloween and Christmas are around the corner. If a manager at Target hires a cashier or stock clerk today, he wants and needs that person around at least through Christmas season.
Could you commit to working for that long? If so, you’d probably be able to get such a job. But if you and the manager both know you’d quit instantly if a better job offer came along the first week of November? He’d be foolish to hire you.
This is something that I’ve never fully understood. If the employer is going to do a background check anyway, what’s the point of making me cough up everything in advance? It seems like a sick honesty test where they are trying to trip you up, rather than a realistic attempt to understand your background.
“Aha! You lied on the background check form! You were supposed to list ‘all degrees and certifications, both current and expired or revoked’, but you didn’t list that you had a ‘Temporary Teen Assistant Lifeguard Certificate’ in the summer of 1983 from the City of Podunk Beach Department of Public Recreation.”
“But it’s 2014, we are in Kansas, and I’m applying for a stockbroker position. It isn’t relevant.”
I don’t think this really happens all that much. I’ve left tons of jobs off when filling out the ‘required job history’ and it’s never bitten me in the ass. I suspect when something like that happen the reality is that the situation changed and the company is using an excuse to not hire you (or fire you) with something you’re unlikely to sue over.
Depending on what your advanced degree is in, some managers may callously take the gamble that you won’t find work in your field any time soon. Say my choice between some barely literate boob and an articulate intelligent employee who is hoping to put her PhD in archaeology to work as soon as possible. If the PhD doesn’t seem to have a chip on her shoulder I’m probably comfortable with her wanting to find something better, just because I don’t think it’s going to happen.
In a city like Portland (or even here in Austin), there are all kinds of overeducated people working as baristas and waitresses.
In such towns, unemployed or underemployed people with advanced degrees in, oh, Dance or Sociology or Art History or Psychology are very common. If they apply for a job at Starbuck’s, nobody is going to bat an eyelash.
On the other hand, if you have a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, a Starbuck’s manager in Austin would probably expect you to find something much better in a hurry.
I have a nephew who finished college, law school, passed the bar exam and then decided he’d rather have a 9-5 job without headaches. He applied for a job in a law office as a paralegal, concealing the law school and bar exam. I have no idea how he explained the missing time, but he has been working as a paralegal for a couple decades now. And playing tennis the rest of the time. He is in California.
Maybe you should move to the DC area; I have a friend who said to me, “you can’t spit without hitting a Phd economist”. Basically, with a masters you’d be at the same education level as pretty much half the people working anywhere.
Generally, people that like their jobs make the best employees. No one gets an advanced degree hoping to end up in a minimum-wage type service job, nor do they even see it as a step in any direction, yet from their degree, it seems likely that they did want to go somewhere. The well-educated service worker is not “overqualified,” they are just likely not to be the best choice for a job that has nothing to do with the worker’s actual qualifications.