A Friday reply voicemail from my headhunter told me, as I landed in San Diego, that, as I suspected, the quiet following the rounds of interviews that I was going to earlier this month yielded nothing, and they picked someone “more junior” for the role.
They apparently really liked me, but were worried that “I would be bored”, in his words.

This was one of the more disappointing pieces of news lately, and the reason I still could not sleep. I thought the role would have been perfect for exactly what I wanted to so. It was a growing fin tech startup that just got funding, they had a great product, the area was close to what I worked with and enjoyed he most in the past, yet I had plenty to learn as well, it had tons of growth potential, everyone I had interviewed with was really cool, especially their chief data guy I would be reporting to, and I had lots of ideas on how to improve the processes they wanted to improve. I haven’t been this excited about a job in a long time, and I thought I made it very clear in both interviews and follow up emails.

However, my stupid resume seems to have made me seem overqualified to them once again – which has been my bane every single time I tried for a job I liked prior to this one.
Either they’d want me for a technical cofounder type role, which I know my tech skills do not make me not qualified for, or I would lack startup or specific industry experience, or they supposedly like me so much that they are concerned that I would be bored, which is patently untrue.

The only reason I got my current job is because this was one time when I responded to a recruiter’s cold call and dumbed my resume down sufficiently enough, and generally did not care if I got the job as I was interviewing for it – also, this is the kind of dysfunctional large company that does not care about nor sees anything. I thought this situation would be temporary, but soon it will be two years…

I am a bit disheartened, and a little at a loss of what to do. Perhaps I’m destined to only work at Dilbertarian enterprises after all, and it’s naively privileged of me to think otherwise.
Anyway, soon enough I might be passing my window of being able to work for startups, and all this might just be for the better.