The reason you can’t find a job: Could you be too smart for a job?

If you’ve applied for a job in the past few years, you may have noticed that the requirements have become, shall we say, a little more stringent. Along with educational requirements, years of experience, strong employment history, and background check, many places require an assessment test. You’ve seen them, the ones that seemingly ask the same question 50 different ways.

They make it convenient since most are taken online. I took my fair share of these tests and answered honestly. I didn’t realize what was being tested until a potential employer told me how it worked.

Just a little background, I applied for this job as an IT recruiter. I met all the requirements listed, education, work history, background, etc. I went online and took the assessment test as required. The test had about 80 questions, and like I said, it seemed like it was asking me the same questions repeatedly.

A few days later we received a call from the company and we scheduled an interview. It was a small business and the guy who called was the owner. I went in for the interview. The interview went well, he told me his story about being in the corporate world and how he hated it. So, he decided to start his own small business.

There were five other people who were working in the office as we spoke. None of the five seemed to be paying attention to what we were saying, they were all working diligently at their little desks. I chatted with the owner for a while (trying to establish rapport) based on our conversations, we were very similar in our approaches and thought processes, so I felt he had revealed the truth to me.

They asked me to take another test online, after our brief conversation. This test was an “intelligence test” (at least he said so). The test took about 30 minutes to complete. This test was basically like the online test he had taken before the interview. When I was done, the owner received the results immediately.

It took a few minutes for him to process the results (that’s my guess) I watched as the other five employees typed on their computers and answered incoming calls. Finally, after about seven or eight minutes, we sat down again.

The owner had a stack of papers that he dropped on the table in front of us.

The top paper had my name on it. He told me, flatly in a moment of candor, “according to the results of your evaluations, you are too smart for this job.”

I didn’t know what that meant. She went on to explain that the reviews are designed to weed people out. He said that companies are looking for a specific type of person. Someone who “isn’t too dumb, but also someone who isn’t too smart.”

He said that people who are “too dumb” struggle with the basics of the job. They make more mistakes and in the long run they won’t be good employees. People who are “too smart” learn the job relatively quickly, get bored, and move on to more challenging work. In the long run, they are not good employees.

I was told that the best employees are the ones who aren’t “too dumb, but not too smart either” and, more importantly, will happily stay there for years. The frequently asked question, “where do you see yourself in five years?” it is done to weed out the overly ambitious.

This was news to me, and I appreciate the small business owner who told me, I wouldn’t have known without his candor. After everything he told me, he offered me the job, but I didn’t accept it. He was looking for a long-term employee, and the truth was, that wasn’t going to be me.

He gave me the computerized results with my name on it. He said that he normally doesn’t do that, but for some reason, he gave it to me. Over time, I read the nearly 40 pages of information provided by my evaluations. I had notes about where and how I would fit in, positive attributes, negative attributes, etc. Things you wouldn’t expect an assessment test to know. I must admit that for the most part it was right on the money.

There were two warnings that the computerized evaluation gave about me to any potential employer. It was saying, beware of the employee in an office environment, he might make other people think like me, and the other; You wouldn’t be ideal for a sales job – the reasoning – you’d be prone to telling potential customers too much of the truth.

As if that was a bad thing.

In short, if you recently lost or are having trouble finding a job. Well, maybe you’re too smart for a job.