Overqualified applicants

mbeam

We've posted for a Generalist on our HR team which is more of an entry-level position for someone with a year or two of experience.

We've gotten applications from people that I could reports to - way overqualifed.

How have you handled this in the past?

WT

I have had the identical situation. This happens sometimes when the job market is soft. If this person will be acting in a chain of command, ask yourself if you could make an assistant out of him or her. I turned down a couple applicants because they had essentially been running a department and I did not believe that I could train them to take direction from me and do it my way. You could get a person that circumstances moved up the ladder too fast and they are looking for a less responsible role. That might work. You do a job applicant (not to mention yourself) no favor if you give them a job where they are bound to be unhappy.

marc

There are some circumstances in which I will hire an otherwise over-qualified person to work for me.

Most of them involve the candidates expectations. A couple of years ago I was looking for an Asst Controller for a small real estate developer. It was, at best, a $35,000 job. One candidate was an ex Price Waterhouse Partner (A big 8 CPA firm - pre merger mania). I brought the guy in, curious about why he would apply for a position for which he was so over qualified.

Turns out he was retired, bored and wanted a job without a lot of pressure, but one where he could use some of his skill and education.

I felt this guy was qualified, but I needed someone who wanted to climb the ladder and was willing to work the hours necessary when the crunch was on - this was more often than not. Once I identified that as an important part of the job, he politely removed himself from consideration.

A guy like this could have lent some much expertise and knowledge to my staff, I would not have hesitated to hire him. Since I had a similar level of experience, I was not worried about him trying to take my job or anything like that.

Gillian3

I agree with Mark. It is completely dependent on where the potential employee is in their stage of working life. The hardest thing to avoid is the the assumption that the employee would be bored, will leave for a better job etc. etc. My situation is a good example - I am doing stuff like I did 20 years ago, part time. It fits what I want, one of which is avoiding the headaches of running an HR department. The HR Manager, with considerably less experience, sometimes asks me how I would handle things. Occasionally I steer her in a slightly different direction, most of the time I tell her that she is doing just fine. We are both happy, but I can understand how someone might question whether or not I am bored.

Try to understand the true motives of the "overqualified". With the right situation, you could have a win-win for both.

HRLASS

I anticipate that this will be coming up more as the "baby boomers" who don't want to retire, look for jobs to scale down to. We've had a couple of recent applicants in both of the categories mentioned below. From both resume and interview, one was so take charge we did not think she could handle a team she didn't lead and we passed. Another was close to retirement age and worked beautifully in an administrative/secretarial position because she had "overqualified" experience, but was happy to be toning down the responsibility and just stick to the work. An excellent employee we tried to retain after she "downsized".

An additional caution - look up the case of Francis Parker (a school in Chicago) and I think the NLRB. The case concerns the elimination of candidates for teacher interviews when they were overqualified based on a wage scale that was tied to experience, i.e., school had a budget for hiring; wage scale was based on years of experience; applicant had more experience than they could afford based on wage scale and was elminated instead of asking if they would accept the lower wage scale. Found disparate impact on older workers.