From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: f43e6,3a06c3a3721845ae X-Google-Thread: 103376,3a06c3a3721845ae X-Google-Thread: 10f5bc,3a06c3a3721845ae X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,3a06c3a3721845ae X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,gid103376,gid10f5bc,gid1108a1,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!q21g2000hsa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Michael Bolton Newsgroups: comp.software-eng, comp.lang.ada, comp.software.testing, comp.object Subject: Re: Am I "Overqualified"? Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 07:28:39 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <2a2fe1c1-4665-4462-877b-38f989e0a3ef@q21g2000hsa.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 76.68.122.225 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1201879720 17004 127.0.0.1 (1 Feb 2008 15:28:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 15:28:40 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: q21g2000hsa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=76.68.122.225; posting-account=RAOp1wkAAACY-J1aBZhaoDBhGLLW311M User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.software-eng:9129 comp.lang.ada:19679 comp.software.testing:7519 comp.object:21952 Date: 2008-02-01T07:28:39-08:00 List-Id: > It seems that lately, I have been turned down for an increasing number > of assignments, because I am "overqualified." > If you want, you can chck my resume at the bottom of our home > page: > http://www.toa.com > Any constructive feedback would be greatly appreciated. "Overqualified" from a potential client might mean "involved in too many things that aren't important to me". Think about your reader. /Your reader is not you./ His interests are very different from yours. Your reader has two issues: 1) He has a problem that he wants solved or task he wants done. 2) He wants to find quickly someone who can solve that problem for him. ANYTHING that slows him down in this task is going to work against you. He isn't interested in anything that isn't relevant to solving his problem, and he's certainly not interested in slogging through 11 pages of biography and citations. Focus on your potential client's needs. Your covering letter is closer to the idea--but then you ask him to look up a whole bunch of stuff on the Web. One more hint: your client may need someone who is able to summarize. ---Michael B.