She must have said I was over qualified more than 20 times

I learned about a position at company and reached out to a former colleague of mine that worked there. She was kind enough to introduce me to the recruiter. The recruiter contacted me and we had an introductory call. After some small talk, we discussed my work history, my resume and salary requirements and she set up an interview time. So far so good. I was supposed to meet with her first and then shew would scheduled a follow meeting with more senior hiring members. During the call, she said that my friend had highly recommended me and she was looking forward to our meeting. The follow up meeting sounded like a given she would just have to work out everyone’s calendars. I arrived a week later at the schedule time and the receptionist brought me to a conference room. On the way, I crossed the no man’s land of twenty somethings stationed in front of their laptops. Once in the conference room, I waited for a few minutes and the recruiter came in. I obviously can’t tell for sure but by her initial reaction and the way she looked me over I think she was surprised by my physical appearance. To be candid I was awkward. She was in her mid to late twenties, I’m guessing. I was in my fifties. It might have been a surprise to her since my colleague that referred me was about 15 years younger than me. maybe I just looked younger in person. Anyway, I can only base this on the way she looked at me when we shook hands but I felt she might have been a bit dissapointed. It was like a the start of a bad blind date. Anyone who’s ever gotten that “vibe” knows what I mean. We sat down and the discussion started with her doing a quick overview of the role. Not 2 minutes into her exposition she says “Well, we’re are looking for someone to fill this role but I’m just afraid you might be overqualified. Overqualified? We spent 30 minutes on a call talking about my background on the phone, reviewing my resume and even my salary requirements, which was in line with the position. There was no mention of my over qualification on our call. No mention of this at all until this meeting. In fact in my last job I had the same title. Then the verbal dance began. We were talking about the company, not even the positions and somehow the word “over qualified” popped up. It was odd because it had nothing to do with what we were talking about. When we got into the actual position it came up several more times. She said it like it was a throw away line. I quickly realized that there was no way this was going anywhere but we continued the back and forth. She spoke highly of my credentials. Talked about how impressed she was with my background and skillsets and waxed on about future opportunities that were so vague I knew they would never come to pass. I tried my best to address the overqualified remark. I mentioned that I was excited about the role as we had discussed it. I pointed out I had just left a similar role. I re-affirmed the qualifications that I could bring to the table. She nodded politely. She smiled a lot but I got the feeling she really wanted to wrap this up. I have to say she was very nice throughout the entire meeting and assured me they would keep me in mind when a position opened up that was better suited for my qualifications. We shook hands again and she walked me to the lobby past the rows of twenty somethings in their open offices and we said our obligatory goodbyes. I headed to the parking lot realizing I didn’t get my parking validated.

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