Be Less Competent?

February 9, 2023 5:26 AM

I'm currently pivoting from a career in arts to (hopefully) a career in administration/local government. I've aligned myself with a job coach who has advised me to be less competent. I need help parsing this.

I've worked as a freelance consultant in arts for more than a decade. After a lot of soul-searching, I want to pivot into a more mainstream career. My key skills are problem-solving, communication, and organisation -- and these skills would translate well into an office-based job. So far so good.

Today I sat down with a job coach who took me through CV building and interview skills. Their main advice was to be less competent, so I'm less intimidating to hiring managers who will think I'm too qualified for the jobs I'm going for.

I'm having real trouble parsing this. How do I make myself look like an attractive employee but also .. like I'm employable? It's been a very long time since I last looked at job sites and CVs, so I'm baffled.

posted by peacesign to Work & Money (18 answers total)

Could you ask the coach to give you some examples of what being "less competent" would look like in your case? I've seen advice along those lines given to people who, e.g., tend to get stuck with admin tasks (stop doing them so quickly and well, and people won't give them to you so often), but it sounds like pretty terrible advice for *getting* a job.

Like, I can understand "don't foreground impressive accomplishments that aren't relevant to the job you're applying for," or maybe "don't necessarily talk to potential coworkers the same way you would talk to an artistic collaborator." But just "be less competent?" Not even "act less competent?" That seems off.

In short, I'm concerned that maybe your job coach has taken their own advice (and perhaps taken it a little too far).
posted by mskyle at 5:33 AM on February 9, 2023

just because you hired them doesn't mean they're correct. Try having a similar conversation with a few people in your extended network - maybe a spouse of a friend who works in a field you're interested in?
posted by rebent at 5:42 AM on February 9, 2023

You're getting bad advice.

I have been an admin, I have admins who report to me, and I have hired admins.

You should present yourself exactly as competently as you are. Do finesse your resume a bit though. If your resume is too experienced, it may get instantly binned for an entry role.

But once you're actually in front of an interviewer, you should be honest about your abilities and experience. Explain that yes, you're aware you're applying for an entry level type role, but you want your foot in the door. Make it clear that you are looking to make a (1 year minimum, ideally 2 year) commitment to that role. You like the organization for its x y and z values, and you're excited to be a part of a growing company and team.

The best entry level hire is someone who's excited to do the entry level job today, and will be ready to train up for the next level of the job in a year. If you dumb yourself down I'm going to be worried if you're going to be able to grow.
posted by phunniemee at 5:56 AM on February 9, 2023

If you role-played interviews with your coach, might they have meant "be less intense in the interview" about your organizational skills, your ability to meet deadlines, your attention to detail. You most certainly don't want to appear less competent.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 6:01 AM on February 9, 2023

Whilst I share the reservations people have about how good or not the coach's advice is, I can see that 'office/admin' type roles span a very large range of roles and competences.

Some team assistant type roles require you to basically do project management for one or more teams or projects. Some require you to order lunch, schedule Teams meetings and maintain the birthday list for the boss so that everybody gets a birthday card.

So if your profile is more aligned with the first type of role and you're applying for the second you're going to be overqualified and people will be reluctant to hire you for a role requiring a lot less skills than you have.
posted by koahiatamadl at 6:01 AM on February 9, 2023

Does anyone want to employ a less competent administrator? Competence seems not like an abstract resume feature but rather like the absolute major qualifier for an administrator specifically. An administrator's competence is what makes the place work. A less competent administrator means other people in the workplace are constantly getting stuck .
I am not HR, but as someone who has had a say in hiring administrators for an academic department, If I had a choice between an administrator who seemed inherently competent but with little experience in the field, vs a seasoned and experienced administrator who didn't seem very competent, there would be no hesitation.
So do they actually mean competent? That just makes no sense to me.
posted by ojocaliente at 6:37 AM on February 9, 2023

I'm one of many writer/editors who pivoted to marketing when people stopped reading, and since then I've interviewed a lot of people trying to do the same. The biggest change is from working independently to working on a team. You've been a consultant, so people hire you to advise them, and your ideas are the ones that get implemented.

It's not clear to me from your post whether you're looking at administrative assistant work where you're support staff, or program administration work where you're the boss. In either case, you're going from being the expert/decider to part of a team. I'll answer re: the latter since you've gotten some responses already re: the former.

A program/department administrator in govt. is probably one of many who may be vying for funding or resources or who need to collaborate on citywide projects, etc. There is a lot of negotiation and people who have all the answers don't do that well in that kind of environment.

While it doesn't mean being less competent, it means balancing your expertise re: ideas/processes/solutions with actively listening to the people who have been doing that work for a long time. It takes effort to adjust to a new culture. As a consultant, you may have mostly dealt with executives, but a program administrator needs to work with everyone, including subordinates and the public.
posted by headnsouth at 7:14 AM on February 9, 2023

Are you in the US? I can help you answer this question, but I’m not certain you’ll like the answer I provide. I don’t like the answer either.

They do not want highly intelligent, capable, abstract thinkers in local/regional/state government roles. Smart? Eh. Competent? You’re pushing it, but maybe competent at certain aspects of said job. They want robots/yespeople who work in a very narrow lane and do not question authority. It’s like being in the military except the benefits are much worse.

You have to be seen as the same as the people who are hiring you, with one or two anecdotes that separate you in the interview from the other candidates. If you have too much experience, education, ability, you won’t be hired; or if they do hire you, they will start working on forcing you out because you aren’t “improving the team,” you’re “making them look bad.”

I’m coming off as a butthole, and the axe is honestly ground to just the handle at this point. I know this. But a) politics b) anti-intellectualism c) misogyny/other
-isms d) failsons are rife in local govt just like areas in the private sector.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 8:05 AM on February 9, 2023

I agree with others that this is...not, on its surface, great advice. And if you're a woman, it is also unfortunately common advice that is a coded way of encouraging you to do more to conform to stereotypical gender norms.

But in the best case scenario and in line with what headnsouth suggests, I would take "be less competent" to mean something like "show that you're willing to 1) take directives and complete tasks set by someone else, 2) solicit as well as follow advice from senior-ranking or more-experienced stakeholders in the organization."
posted by pinkacademic at 8:29 AM on February 9, 2023

Lol Sara is Disenchanted - yes yes yes! Failsons. *That* is the word for them! I've been calling them Absent "leaders", and while true it sounds too benign to explain the absolute chaos and fail that they subject their teams to (run by incredibly competent women who "can't" be promoted because they're too critical to the whole org/department continuing to function!).

Back to the OP - I took your coach's comment to indicate you should focus on expressing steady, calm, 'whatever happens is great' qualities over go-getter achievement-oriented ladder-climbing qualities you needed as a consultant. This makes sense for admin support jobs (go-getters climb the walls w/o immediate tasks, but feast or famine is the nature of their work and really really excellent admins I've worked with have provided critical support to the whole office in networking, introductions, cheerfulness, listening, gossip, institutional knowledge and relationships with a huge variety of people. They couldn't put any of that on a resume and it's not in the job description, but it's only possible because they don't want a promotion and are OK with doing a lot of chatting between 'meh' tasks.

My .02 - the goal-oriented (support) admins I've met didn't last 5m in the role.
posted by esoteric things at 8:53 AM on February 9, 2023

If you have to be less competent, you're aiming too low. Re-post the question on Ask A Manager; I think they're really good at questions like this, in addition to Ask.Me.

not clear to me whether you're looking at administrative assistant work where you're support staff, or program administration work where you have more control in a narrow range. I did Admin Asst work and was always promoted when I was discovered to have competence, at least until I got old. I think you'd be great at program management.

Be yourself. Write a solid, factual, resume. You're most likely to get a job you'll enjoy by networking. If I tried to present myself as less competent, I'd be miserable and feel insincere, and wouldn't want to work for whoever might hire me(or work with someone who wanted me to present myself that way). However, resumes are scanned by computers, so use verbiage that can be slotted into recognizable roles.

I've had experience with career counselors through a couple layoffs, and it was really bad, so I'm pretty cynical about the field.
posted by theora55 at 9:23 AM on February 9, 2023

I used to work at a place like sara is disenchanted described, but now I'm in a unicorn local government role where we have awesome benefits and can be creative. I am trying to figure out if you're trying to be a city administrator or an administrative assistant, because my answers to you are going to vary wildly.

Nobody wants an incompetent city administrator. That said, government is hung up on credentials, so if you don't have an MPA, you may need to seek some sort of certification to get in that role. I'd highlight your progressively responsible leadership and experience with budgeting and people management.

If you're looking to be an administrative assistant, which is a super important role in local gov, stress why that role appeals to you. Your skills can translate because you're good with the public and working with unique personalities. You're highly organized and can do more with less (this would honestly apply to an administrator as well). If someone questions that the job seems like a step back, you want to serve the public and are more concerned about job fulfillment and less about title or perceived prestige.
posted by notjustthefish at 9:31 AM on February 9, 2023

Ummm, just tossing this out here...are you by any chance a woman?
posted by amtho at 10:53 AM on February 9, 2023

Caveat: my MPA has not opened any doors for me - now apparently they think I “want too much money” because I believe $15.93 an hour isn’t quite enough to live on.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 11:08 AM on February 9, 2023

I'm going to say the job coach's advice depends heavily on what local government you're looking to work for, and what department you're looking to work in. These things can vary widely.
posted by wondermouse at 3:18 PM on February 9, 2023

"show that you're willing to 1) take directives and complete tasks set by someone else, 2) solicit as well as follow advice from senior-ranking or more-experienced stakeholders in the organization."

As others have pointed out, there could definitely be a big difference in the meaning of this advice depending on what type of role you're applying for, and there can also be wide variations in how certain types of competency are perceived and received in different workplaces. The size and resource levels of the places you're applying will also make a difference.

That said, I just went through a hiring process for a programme administrator in my small non-profit, and my guess is that pinkacademic's advice is sound. During our interviews, my main concern about people who were working as consultants/running their own shops was whether or not they'd have elevated expectations about their input to high-level strategy, and whether they were actually prepared to get in and actually get involved in implementation, vs just providing advice that "somebody else" makes real.
posted by rpfields at 4:51 PM on February 9, 2023

hire a different job coach
posted by Jacqueline at 6:46 AM on February 10, 2023

I think I understand their point, but it seems very poorly communicated. You are contemplating what, on a very, very superficial level, seems like an odd move. You want to move from (again on a very superficial level) seems like a "sexy" career (A Consultant!! In The Arts!!) to a fairly drab one in local government (dog licenses! building permits!). So it seems most important that you build your CV and focus your interviews on explaining why you want to make the transition. As a person filling positions, I am most comfortable when I understand why the applicant wants the job.
posted by rtimmel at 7:38 AM on February 10, 2023