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"Nuanced" seems like an extravagantly generous characterization of your interlocutors' resistance. It's pretty tough to get hired if you have to demonstrate to your prospective employers that they are actually narrow-minded ignoramuses. It seems to me, though, that hiring procedures often have a tacit agenda that actually drives the process. Perhaps there is a global red flag up for PhD's with copy editing experience. On the other hand, it may well be that another firm with the same search criteria might judge your balance of experience and skills exactly as you do.
While I am not a PhD holder yet, I have found judicial editing of one's c.v. is often necessary to get past such narrow-minded thinking about an applicant's qualifications. Experience outside the narrow band requested/expected of a "suitable" applicant can get you screened out. On the other hand, at lower levels of employment it is not uncommon to see requirements that only someone born in the 1950s and who spends 24/7 living with computers could ever possibly possess. One of our esteemed PhD candidates or holders should do a study into the prevalence of the "creativity editing" resume/c.v. necessary just to get an interview. Pumping up one's resume is definitely a bad idea, but dumbing down that same resume seems to be a matter of survival in some situations.
All I gots to say is AT LEAST MS MUGWUMP GOT A BLASTED INTERVIEW, GOT IN FRONT OF A HIRING COMMITTEE! I have trouble even gettin' there, at least for tenure track jobs in the academe. Closest I've come: one phone interview. Blech!
