In Tough Job Market, Many Job-Seekers Bring Extra Skills

In April, Donna Guran moved from the San Francisco area to Braintree so her husband could take a new job engineering software for video games. She thought she’d find a job without too much trouble, but she was wrong.

Unable to wait any longer, she went to a temp agency. Guran’s experience lies in publishing - helping authors develop their manuscripts and forecasting finances. She found a temporary job with a publisher, but it’s clerical. She enters data and mails packages - not the work her English degree and publishing certificate qualify her to do.

Overqualified workers have become commonplace in this historically poor job market. A survey released earlier this month by the employment website Glassdoor.com showed that among job-seekers who believed economic volatility would affect their search, 45 percent said the market would make them more likely to accept a job for which they were overqualified.