With unemployment levels rising on the Sunshine Coast, applicants are now considering lower level employment opportunities in an effort to keep themselves on the payroll.
These applicants are faced with many challenges, including:
- Competing with a large number of applicants who have recent, proven support level skills and experience.
- Tailoring their resume to highlight their basic level skills, rather than their management experience.
- Overqualified paranoia, where employers assume you will leave their company as soon as a suitable management position becomes available.
Being perceived as “overqualified” can often feel unavoidable, but making some minor tweaks to your application may be all you need to get to the interview stage.
- Cover letter is key
Explaining your situation before they have the chance to judge you based on your resume may be your ticket to their shortlist. Explain your current situation, list skills and experience that are only relevant to the position and mention why you would be happy to stay in a position such as theirs long term. As long as you give a reasonable explanation about why you are applying for a job that is lower than your qualifications, employers be comfortable taking a chance on you.
2. Be yourself
The most important point is – don’t lie on your resume. It can feel tempting to remove some high levels positions that you think are getting in your way but doing this will make your resume look disjointed and may come back to bite you when question time comes around. Instead, try altering a few points and including a few keywords such as “assisting” “supporting” and “reporting to”.
