I read a CNN article over the weekend entitled “Overqualified and Underpaid Workers“.   Reading the article caused the venom in me to overflow.  So much venom at the time, I had to wait a few days to gather my thoughts in order to write a nice, politically correct article.  The premise of the article stated that employers are taking advantage of the economic times by cherry picking the top talent looking for employment and paying them less than what they are worth.  The employers interviewed for the article believe that this is a good tactic to continue to save money.

My immediate reaction after reading the article is once again, the shortsightedness “i.e. stupidity” of such a strategy.  I guarantee you that if and when the economy picks back up and higher paying jobs are in need again, the same employers interviewed will be complaining that they are having difficulty keeping talent.  Even though I do have an M.B.A., it doesn’t take one to realize that having employees who feel undervalued on your staff is a recipe for turnovers.  You might benefit from having this kind of talent in the short term, however it is silly to expect any long term benefits out of it.

To add insult to injury, the article goes on to state that employers are starting to increase the requirements for positions while simultaneously lowering the salary.  They have the advantage of doing so because of the current economic conditions and they feel that it is no longer necessary to pay high salaries in order to get high level employees.  It is clear they are taking advantage of Economics 101, The Law of Supply and Demand.

This article irritates me because I am one of those individuals who, career-wise, has found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place and is finding it harder to be compensated for what I feel I am worth. I have been doing IT related work for over 10 years. I am a jack of all trades but a master of none, partially due to the fact that I worked for employers who needed me to be versatile and multi-task oriented. I am fluent in three computer operating systems, “Windows, MAC, and Linux”, a hack programmer in C# and Perl and some web development. I am overqualified to work for example at a help desk. One manager told me point blank he knew I would be a wasted hire because I wouldn’t stay. While at the same time, according to the recruiters, my lack of a security clearance and certifications make it difficult for me to be considered for system admin jobs that fit my experience level. I will save the security clearance and certification issue for another blog post. I will have some interesting things to talk about on that topic.

In closing, I would like to include the following lines from a blog I read the other day about the same article. In fact, the owner of the blog articulates her frustrations about the article in a much wittier way than myself.

It’s people. And people are not a commodity.

It’s your workforce. It’s your brand and your reputation.

It’s your company’s future.

You get what you pay for.

Powerful stuff, I couldn’t have said it better. Check out their blog for the full article.