Making Career Choices When Jobs Are Scarce: Is Scaling Back Your Resume Effective in the Long Run?

A weak economy creates a climate of underpaid professionals. Think about it in terms of basic economic principles of supply and demand, where the demand for labor is only a fraction of the available supply of workers. If you're too expensive, an employer can easily find a less expensive option in the talent pool.

On the other hand, the demand for employment, a resource that is becoming increasingly scarce, is high. In a society that's driven by money, people need an income to survive, so they are willing to sacrifice some of their personal economic value for less pay. After all, our families need to eat. Our kids need to sleep under a roof. Even if we cut back our grocery bills by 30 percent, there's still food on the table.

In today's economic climate, profit-driven businesses have the upper hand in squashing wages and benefits - because people are willing to work for less, even if that means taking a second job or scaling back their livelihoods.

With a scarcity of available positions, job seekers have begun scaling back their expectations. Former company vice presidents are applying for entry level positions, and 10-year industry veterans are hoping for jobs that require little to know experience. In the situations that these applicants receive a call back, they hear feedback that they are overqualified for the position.

It's understandable - employers don't want to hire someone who will bounce into a better opportunity within a few months. They want someone who is serious about making and keeping a commitment, not someone who is seeking a temporary placeholder between career steps. So what happens when an experienced professional is looking to enter a new industry? What if an overqualified applicant is serious about making a commitment to the position? When immediately discarding that resume, a recruiter may never know.

In response to the growing scarcity of mid-level positions, applicants have begun scaling back their resumes - omitting areas of experience and advanced degrees. To mask industry experience, older professionals are leaving out their year of graduation. For some people, this strategy has been successful, earning them a few more call-backs (as opposed to none). According to some economists, this phenomenon accompanies every recession. If and once the economic climate improves, people will bounce back. Among the younger entry-level generation; however, the feedback is more pessimistic.

A big question that stems from the resume scale-back trend is whether advanced degrees are worth it. The biggest economic demand is for people who will work for low wages, part time, as a contractor, and without benefits - people who don't have families to support and people who don't expect a high salary.

Would graduate school provide the same return on investment that it once did? In the long term, are we better off stopping with our bachelor's, rather than taking on additional debt for an advanced degree that may not necessarily help us earn higher wages? By scaling back our resumes and avoiding graduate school, are we stunting economic progress by creating a culture of low-skilled laborers instead of innovators?

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