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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

The author may just have meant that he was rejected from such jobs due to being honest about his education when asked, which is a fairly common practice.

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There's nothing dishonest about omitting irrelevant qualifications and experience from a job application.

Sure. But if you are asked directly you may not feel comfortable lying about it.

I can't imagine that the McDonald's manager is going to ask whether you have as Master's degree but just didn't write it down.

No, but people ask - what were you doing between date A - date B where there is a gap in your work history.

If you present as something unexpected (more educated, different social class, different age range, etc.) to someone hiring, they are often going to try and figure you out.

Genuine question for you (and anyone else), while on the topic. If you had a Master's degree and all you did was "normal" office job type stuff, but now if you want to do hourly burger flipping or whatever else, how would you go about tailoring your CV? You can drop a degree or something but now you have to also account for 5 to 7yrs of full-time job experience.....I am trying to rack my brain.

I doubt you need to account for a gap in work experience for a burger flipping job.

I had a friend who had a BS and wanted a temp part time job but got turned down a lot....and these were simple jobs!

I omit irrelevant info from my resume to taylor it towards it's intended audience. I would downplay and even flat out lie to an employer to avoid becoming homeless.

I do wonder what a resume would look like if it contained a HS diploma, one fast food job, and a 30 year employment gap, though...

I started a software company out of college. By the time I was 25, my car had been repossesed and I'd been evicted from my condo. I had $400 to my name, that I'd intended to use for rent.

I bought a bicycle and got a day job doing credit card collections for a bank.

That was my 'big break'; I still work for a bank, but now I write the software. I worked my way up.

One afternoon I was talking to someone from human resources, and she mentioned that they didn't want to hire me for that job, back when I was 25. Why? Because I'd scored so high on the entrance exam. Basically they thought it was pointless to hire me because I was overqualified. Yet I was homeless at the time, having been evicted from my condo!

I think the fear was that you would take the job and then leave ~6 months later for a better one.

No it's not. I left off 80 percent of my resume when I needed to apply to jobs that were "below" me. Its what you do.

It absolutely is a common practice that people be turned down for jobs because those hiring think they are "overqualified" for various reasons. Something you are obviously aware of by trimming your resume; you were being strategic.

Whether or not the OP was strategic about this I have no idea. Sometimes people are turned down just because they give the impression of being overqualified, or because omitting that experience leaves too many gaps.

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