Are You Overqualified, or Are They Just 'Not Ready'?

Grace Willis is an agile transformation practitioner.

  Career Development   New Practitioners  

On a recent transatlantic flight, I had a lot of time to think. I watched Larry Crowne starring my favorite actor, Tom Hanks. The premise of the movie is based on a man who gets laid off because management determined that, due to his lack of a college degree, he was basically un-promotable and therefore dead weight.

All of this transpired despite his being a loyal, long-term, high-performing employee (he was employee of the month several times) at a high-traffic retail outlet. Larry enrolls in college to protect himself from this type of job disenfranchisement going forward. The message initially conveyed: If you invest in your education, you will reap the rewards in your profession (or the opposite: no investment, no reward).

I can definitely state that the former is not always the case. Given that continuing education includes the pursuit of industry certifications such as the PMP credential, I can assert that—based upon my professional experience as a project manager/agile practitioner—this supposition of academic-invest in exchange for recognition, rewards and promotions seems to be false.

I did all the “right” things. I pursued my bachelor’s degree with a major in information technology and graduated with a high GPA. After years as an IT …

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