Over-qualified candidates are more likely to contribute more to the given jobs. Over-qualified candidates are also more likely to quit your organisation as they find better opportunities elsewhere giving significant rise to employee turnover. Can you kindly share your opinions and your country-specific experiences in this issue?

Is it good or risky to hire overqualified candidates in your organisation? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_good_or_risky_to_hire_overqualified_candidates_in_your_organisation [accessed Apr 12, 2016].

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Hi,

The problem is when the organization considers over-qualified candidates like others. Top talents get bored quickly if the organization doesn’t give them enough space to explore all their competencies.

Regards

Your question seems focused on vertical mobility issues.  It depends then on the motivation of the overqualified candidate and if the organization is willing to match that motivation by conduciveness of the work environment, support in terms of rules and policy adjustment, and installing new incentive system.

However, there are people who can live without vertical mobility and wanted lateral growth.  This said, the organization should be able to read carefully what the employee has in mind.

Dear Prof. Arhan,

In developing countries such as Pakistan where job opportunities are scarce and it becomes hard to get desired level of task execution from merely qualified personnel. They need training to become qualified incurring time, cost and energy. Over-qualified serve better in these conditions.

I am ocular witness of such situations in public organizations in which over-qualified have worked tremendously and they serve as a great mentor for junior and inexperienced co-workers. Benefit goes to employees and organizations both in terms of professional development.

In public sector, job security is high; it is less likelihood that over qualified leaves the job until they get very high opportunities. In the awake of scarce opportunities, high job opportunities fall like rain in desert.

In private sector, situation is however, different. Over-qualified look for green pastures always. That is why turnover is high. But in both the cases, over qualified can be retained with good management support and constant monitoring. Their experience is worthwhile and that can prove advantageous.

I hope my experience will provide food for thought.

Dear Arhan,

In any organization there is a certain organizational culture and a workplace spirituality. If these fields of rational, emotional, and spiritual knowledge and the organizational leadership stimulate new ideas and offer to all workers opportunities for their self-realization, the over-qualified people with respect to some jobs may change their positions such that they can get new challenging requirements. Moreover, in the new companies based on increasing organizational entropy (see for instance Google), there is a high level of challenge such that the notion of over-qualification disappear. In the industrial type of organization where there is a stiff distribution of jobs and tasks, over-qualified workers are under-used and under-paid and they leave for more challenging jobs. In conclusion, there is no generic answer for your question in terms of yes or no. It depends on the type of business field, type of organizational structure and management, organizational culture, workplace spirituality, labor legislation and country economic development and culture.

Best regards,

Constantin

I think that hiring over qualified candidates in the organisation cannot be any less as bad as hiring the under qualified. The reason is that the over qualified personnel will always think he or she is doing a favour to the organisation.

Hiring over-qualified candidates is good (new ideas, initiative, innovation, increased organisational performance due to the high productivity, etc.) but risky for the effective management of the organisation due to the leadership crisis that it can generate (they can think that they are indispensable). However, assuming that there is a need for over-qualified staff, the managers must prepare a suitable induction process to permit the over-qualified staff to master the organisation culture, organisational structure in terms of hierarchy, responsibilities and accountability. Also design for them a good compensation system according to their needs, to avoid conflict and high turnover rate, because according to Human Capital Theory, the more an employee is qualified or competent, the more he has the ability to quit. 

There is no one perfect answer to this; wherein overqualified employees will bring in more talent than requested for, if organisation is not able to harness it and provide them grounds for expression of talents, it will lead to turnover, but if an organisation has good plan for careers in long term, getting more talented people is always good; human as a nature looks for appreciation and recognition for their ability and performance; thus getting overqualified people will be bad if we have no plan to retain them, where is it will be really good for organisation in terms of growth and innovation, if we can provide them avenues for utilising their talent and also have performance appreciation accordingly.

It is the responsibility of the HRM to hire persons whose qualifications and experience match with the job profile, as well as the persons' exposures in past jobs fulfill the specific requirements in terms of abilities to handle the jobs for which the persons have been hired. Performance is the product of knowledge and attitude. There is no guarantee that hiring overqualified person will ensure better job performance. On the contrary, there is risk of such person getting psychologically disengaged, resulting in attitudinal problem and poor contribution. Proper deployment, engagement, empowerment, recognition, conducive organizational culture boost performance, and not that the higher qualifications.

It is hard to predict the effect of being overqualified--having more skills than needed is good because you may be able to grow the job around you and may be able to move up. You should be able to do the job better than those not overqualified.,. But you may also be bored and even arrogant. It;s a case by case issue.

I strongly feel that in an environment in which we embrace life-long learning there is no such thing as over-qualification. This is a false concept at best (if not even a hidden age discrimination). It actually comes down to an over-supply of experience which should mainly bother the employee, not the employer.

Strictly speaking, isn't it so that anyone is eventually overqualified since no counterpart can fully value and reimburse the richness of knowledge and life experience of another person used by the counterpart?

"Overqulification" might become an issue, where boredom sets in (think of productivity, work safety...) and might lead to high turn-over if left unaddressed. As long as both sides are aware of the over-supply and manage it properly (people development) to Reduce the gap over time, I do not see any side at a loss.

They are several possibilities. Overqualified person more likely becomes de-motivated within a shorter time and has high expectations over various aspects of the employment which are difficult to achieve or not realizable. This is one possibility. Another possibility is that overqualified person gives a better contribution to the organization with an expectation that he/she will get a promotion, within a short time, to a job for which the person will be no longer overqualified. If the organization does not provide an opportunity to get promoted, more likely the person reduces performance or leaves the organization. Another possibility is that the overqualified person does not give due acceptance to the superior as his or her leader. If the superior is similar to or lower than the overqualified person, there is more probability to occur conflicts which will impair productivity.

Here it is important to emphasise that instead of “the most qualified person” or “overqualified person”, “the most appropriate person” needs to be selected for the job vacancy. The most appropriate person from a pool of job applicants may be the most qualified person or not. Right selection systematically attempts to choose the person who suits best with the job/person specification relevant to the job vacancy.

In general, It depends of the time term: in short terms, it could be a very good idea, since an overqualified person has expectations that could enrich de job, and expands the vision to others; but in long term,it could be very destructive, because people feel unappreciated and can start being careless about the job and arrogant with their co-workers.

First i do disagree with the premise that there is no such thing as overqualified. Here is the honest answer. Yes and No. Is the organization equipped with a sound succession planning process?. Are managers committed to provideing honest performance appraisals and developmental opportunities to employees.  Also are jobs flexivable enough for such people to stretch them selves? Is the organization growing at a pace that allows for movement both lateral and upward. If the answer is yes to these questions then sure. In fact you may want to encourage such hiring. But if no to any one of these questions then you risk having the person leave soon (a substiantial cost) or be so bored they do not do such a good job and it would have been better to hire someone less qualifiedto huyje ble enou? isssilas are

When selecting an employee, make sure you have enough means of seeing all sides of the person's personality and qualifications: Hiring an employee who is overqualified for the position could affect the organization both positively and negatively. Over qualified employee may be usefull for higher position in future but he may be dissatisfied with his present job and because of this high turnover may be observed in the organsiation

In general, the overqualified employee is fundamentally less likely to be happy with their position. Consequently, he may likely leave the organization at the first opportunity. From the organization’s point of view, the suitable employee is the one that feel grateful for the opportunity to work there. If over-qualified candidate takes the job it's because he couldn't find anything better. This can lead to a certain resentment of his situation. He may feel bored with the work, because he prefers challenging assignments and authority. At some point, he may change his mind about taking the pay-cut and start demanding for more money.

Thanks. I appreciate your contribution.

It is risky for the organizations.

Prof. Anthonypillai , could you please explain to me why it's risky for the organisation? Thank you so much, sir.

Generally the more competent the better but they could be frustrated if you cannot grow the job around them.

Thank you so much Prof. Locke. It's great honour for me to have your words on my discussion question. With profound gratitude.