I am over qualified.
At least that’s what potential employers seem to think. Let me give you a bit of background.
I have been working at the University of Lethbridge since 2001. It’s a pretty good job as far as remuneration goes.
I started at the U of L as a website developer for the Faculty of Management. It was a big job with a lot of work maintaining thousands of web pages. It would have stayed a big job, but for one problem.
I’m too efficient.
I know some people consider efficiency a good trait, but I’ve worked myself out of a job.
You see, when I started, I made all changes by hand. Needed to change the font colour on every page? Would take hours as I combed the thousands of pages changing font tags. Needed to change the header image on each page? Not as big a job, but would still take a few hours.
Then I discovered a few things. Server Side Includes allowed me to make changes to headers, footers, and menus in one place and it would populate the entire website. What took hours, now took seconds. CSS allowed me to store font specifications and the like in one location. What took hours — if not days — before now took me seconds. Coldfusion allowed me to create virtual pages out of one page and database of data, as well as allowed me to give editing access of select content to other people.
I had a choice to make. I could make the faculty’s website more efficient, thereby reducing loading time, server space, and my response time, as well as improving search engine placement, but I would also reduce the work I had to do every day. Or I could keep the website inefficient, but keep my workload. The latter may have involved into a team leader position since the content of the website is always growing.
My boss has been helpful. He’s tried assigning new duties to increase my workload. Now, I provide first-tier desktop support, videoconference support, and asset management. Despite all this, the future of my job is in jeopardy. Luckily I’m unionized; otherwise I would have been fired already.
I saw the writing on the wall long ago, so for the last several years, I’ve been job searching. The depressing thing about it all is everyone who’s interviewed me considers me to be overqualified.
- Web designer for Saskatchewan design firm? Overqualified
- Desktop support for national chartered accounting firm? Overqualified
- Communications officer for Saskatchewan college? Overqualified
- Logistics coordinator for national food processor? Overqualified
- Project manager for tech firm? Overqualified
- Office manager for international financial services firm? Overqualified
- Business support associate for international agricultural products firm? Overqualified
- Inventory administrator for Alberta farm equipment dealer? Overqualified
You get the picture.
So what’s a guy to do?