For decades, hiring managers have routinely bypassed overqualified candidates on the assumption they would become bored and either leave or become a management headache.
That is a mistake, says Greg Reilly, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut’s School of Business who has made a study of the subject.
Hiring people with more skills, education and experience than a job requires is a win-win for workers and employers, according to Reilly.
“There is a popular and persistent belief that it is risky to hire high cognitive ability employees for simple jobs because they are likely to become bored and leave, resulting in wasted training and the high costs of hiring a replacement,” says Reilly.
“However, based on our research, we have concluded that, in most cases, being smarter does not make someone more likely to leave a job,” says Reilly.
Businesses can reap the benefits of hiring people are who are clearly overqualified for the positions they apply for, Reilly says. And there’s evidence the marketplace is agreeing.
“I think companies are showing more interest in hiring older, mature workers who are experienced in their field,” says Greg Beno, senior director at Adecco Group in Hartford. “There’s an advantage to hiring overqualified workers. They tend to have a stronger work ethic; kids are out of the house so their time is a little more flexible and they might not need to earn as much money.”
Experienced and mature workers are just as productive as their unskilled counterparts are and in fact, take on leadership roles and educate their peers in entry-level positions.
That’s what happened with a client staffing consultant Richard Stewart worked with.
A senior Hartford insurance exec with a business degree and nearly two decades of experience managing hundreds of workers was clearly overqualified for an entry-level position at a new company, but Stewart landed him the job anyway.
According to Stewart, founder of Stewart Staffing Solutions in Hartford, the retired insurance executive was itching to work for a paycheck again without the pressure of a senior-level position.
Turns out the company Stewart placed his client with needed an experienced hand capable of managing a small team.
“The gentleman didn’t need to earn the same kind of money he did before and he certainly didn’t want the pressure of managing a lot of people, which he did in his previous position,” says Stewart.
It turned out to be a perfect match, says Stewart.
The executive’s new job gave him an opportunity to contribute his talent and expertise along with the money to supplement his retirement and the company that hired him scored a mature talent at a lower cost.
“We suspect that high ability people take on low complexity jobs with their eyes wide open,” says Reilly. “They’re not talking the position because they are particularly interested in job fulfillment or moving up a career ladder.”
“Instead, we think that these individuals have alternative motives such as family, location or outside interests and want a job that will enable them to do the non-work activities they desire,” says Reilly.
In a market where job seekers outnumber available positions five to one, employers can now afford to hire highly educated, overqualified and mature talent at bargain-basement prices.
However, many job seekers worry about how often they are rejected for lower-level positions they desperately want and believe they qualify for.
For many workers, climbing the ladder has turned into just being able to hold on to a job. More than 64 percent of workers laid off over the past 12 months had applied for positions that were below the job level they previously held, according to a Career Builder survey.
Maria G. Bernacki, a staffing consultant at Adecco, recently placed a former sales director who earned $100,000-plus last year in a job with a local manufacturing company where he makes $10 per hour now.
Bernacki says her client had been more of a director who closed deals and managed people, whereas the new job is mostly basic manufacturing assembly.
“He really needed a job, so he took what he could get,” says Bernacki. “He hopes in a few months, after he proves himself, he can approach management and talk about advancement. He would like to move up and earn more money.”
Reilly’s research covered more than 5,000 employees from across the spectrum from McDonald’s workers to aerospace engineers. His research is scheduled to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology this winter.
