‘Overqualified’ Is Just Polite Code for ‘Too Damn Old’
The HR code for “ageism” has existed for years. It’s time we called it out.
→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED
Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.
There’s a corporate euphemism that has quietly become one of the most insulting phrases in professional life.
Overqualified.
On the surface it sounds polite. What it usually means is you’re too old.
We have built a workforce that pretends to admire experience and quietly shows it the door. Overqualified is the word that lets everyone do it without saying what they mean. The dismissal sounds like a compliment. The woman leaving the interview is left to figure out whether to feel insulted or grateful.
I assigned this piece to Joanne Helperin because she has the voice to call it what it is, and because money pieces written for women are almost universally terrible. Preachy. Boring. Or written like a lazy LinkedIn post. Our money coverage has to deliver real service and real cultural argument in the same piece.
Joanne interviewed women who were passed over, ghosted, nudged out, or told that having grandchildren and having a job were somehow mutually exclusive. But the piece is bigger than four women’s stories. It is about the word itself, and what overqualified is doing right now, in a job market where AI is replacing the sectors women run. HR. Marketing. Sales. Communications. Social. The fields women built careers in are the among first ones being gutted. And then a woman who stepped out for a few years to caregive walks back in and meets a twenty-six-year-old recruiter who has already decided she is from another century.
One of our readers said it in the comments better than any of us could:
I want to go back to work and I have extensive experience. But the baby recruiters look at me and I hear it in their voice. Oh, you haven’t worked in a couple years? Yeah, but I didn’t forget anything. I’m still relevant.
She is. We are. Our experience is not a threat.
Dismissing it as “too much” is.