Being Overqualified for Something Does Not Rule Out The Satisfaction

I recently discovered something about working for big companies compared to smaller companies. Big companies pay you well enough for the tear and wear they’d inflict on you. This might be in the form of physical stress, mentally or emotionally. However, the cycle of work in big companies is almost always vicious. Whereas with smaller companies, it’s no brainer to assume they might not always pay you according to your needs.

Now the tricky thing here is, you can equally find “small but mighty” companies that are willing to pay you well (payment could be monetary or otherwise) but they don’t demand a whole lot from you. One issue might be that you’re a little over-qualified for the position you occupy.

Being over-qualified for a role doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get satisfaction from the job itself. As a Masters’s degree holder, I once worked for a company that paid me the salary of a college dropout. It didn’t rule out the fact that I was underpaid but it didn’t also exclude the feeling of satisfaction I got from working there the short time I did. I made good friends, the duties I carried out as a quality assurance officer were totally in sync with my personal values. Perhaps, that’s why. But then when I got a more befitting job in a bigger place with a fairly good salary under my field of study, I was utterly unsettled most of the time. This further encapsulates the need to override the contradiction of saying that less-paying jobs aren’t satisfactory or smaller roles don’t yield satisfaction because it all depends on the metrics you’re using for it.

When next you find yourself assuming a role you’re overqualified for, be kind to yourself. Don’t be too quick to translate it to mean you have low self-esteem or lack self-awareness and maybe that’s the reason you’re there — or attribute it to loving yourself any less.

Sometimes we’re victims of circumstances we can’t help in as much as we know we could be doing better. So the best mindset to implore is to try to see the positive aspects of the role you’re playing. In so doing, you might accidentally come across some hidden skills that will propel you to a better tomorrow.

For example, you might be working as a clerk instead of a managerial role that you deserve and in carrying out your duties you need to deal with lots of typing, phone calls, and drafting. These soft skills might come in handy and become the added advantage you need to effectively carry out a bigger role in the future, peradventure, bigger than the role of the said manager you thought you deserved.

This is not to say that you would intentionally sit your ass in a place that doesn’t serve you either emotionally, mentally or physically, etc, but rather a matter of saying that when you find yourself playing a role smaller than you, don’t activate the autopilot mode too quickly to get through.

Everything in life is a learning process. It’s not a coincidence that you’re in such a situation. It’s more of fate — a predestined occurrence in your life that must come to pass. So what you do is embrace it, enjoy the process, while looking for further dynamics and promotion.

This speaks beyond a job role.

It is also applicable to other roles you assume in your life, as a friend, a spouse, a colleague, a parent. You might be feeling a friend is too unintelligent for you to keep up with. But in actuality, perhaps you need to learn to be intelligently informed on how to deal with different groups of people who are different from you.

Virtues to exercise while waiting to get out of “it” or get promoted include:

• Acceptance: That you’re in a place you are overqualified for.
• Patience: To deal with the process before any outcome of change.
• Endurance: With encountering “belittling” activities whilst at it.
• Growth mindset: to make a plan and follow steps to get yourself out of it as soon as you can.

Notice how I do not think it has to be a forever venture?

Because I understand that no matter how satisfactory something is, if you don’t deserve to be there, it still affects you adversely.

The point of this piece is to train your mind on how to deal with circumstances you didn’t cut out for. Especially if you’re lucky enough to get satisfaction from them in one way or the other for example, making good friends from a company that pays you shit.

Other analogies to help here are:

Imagine you had an easy-going colleague who’s willing to liaise with you and understands you personally in that underpaid job.

Imagine you had a funny but unattractive friend who always brings forth both comparisons and criticism whenever you both head out.

You might get rid of the position or friend later on, but find something positive to hold on to while at it because I reiterate: just because you’re overqualified for something doesn’t necessarily elude the satisfaction you get or will get from it.

Be wise.