I (33/F) had an interview last week for (what looked like) an amazing job! They were looking for someone to come into their Indirect Procurement role who had no experience with contracts and whatnot. I've been in 2 jobs (a combined total of 12 months) of working with contracts, but both roles were more on the admin side (managing them) rather than going into depths with the contract jargon. I told the company this in my interview, because this company were looking to take someone on to train and mould & somewhere down the line, sponsor for their CIPS. All of this would have been PERFECT for me.
So today, I get a call from the Recruitment Agency and was told I was unsuccessful because I was considered “over-experienced”. I honestly don't know how I'm over-qualified, unless they wanted to take on someone who's never dealt with or seen Procurement contracts in their career.
So all-in-all, what I wanted to ask people, is being “over-qualified” or “over-experienced” a genuine reason to not hire someone? Or is it a go-to phrase used because they don't want to hire you for other reasons they aren't legally allowed to use (ageism/sexism/racism etc)?
I mean, I guess it depends on the situation/people/company involved… I guess both situations could be true.
However, right now, I feel like they used it on me as a discriminative reason, maybe because I'm too fat, not pretty enough, older than the age average of their team members? I don't know what it is, I'll never know. I just cannot see how I could have been considered “over-experienced”!