I recently brought my car to a mechanic for scheduled maintenance; just an oil change is all I needed. When I arrived I noticed the metal sign, proudly hung outside the door announcing "ASE Certified - Over 30 years experience". Obviously, he has way too much experience to do a simple oil change.....and even if I let him do it, he'd probably have a poor attitude and would jump at the chance to do a transmission service and just leave my car half finished.
No, he doesn't charge any more to do an oil change than the drive through oil change down the road with lesser experienced employees. And it's probably true that he would notice that fuel filter needing service that the drive through would miss. Why not hire him? Well obviously he's OVERQUALIFIED.
We all know that OVERQUALIFIED workers are only "settling" for that job until they can find something else; that OVERQUALIFIED workers are significantly more dissatisfied with their jobs and will foment discontent throughout the workplace; that OVERQUALIFIED employees were probably compensated at a higher level in their previous employment and want more compensation than we can afford; and that OVERQUALIFIED workers are untrainable and are too difficult to coach and would never accept our corporate philosophy.
Where do we get these facts? Why from that vast cesspool of information culled from the unsubstantiated, outdated, self-biased trash can we call common knowledge.
Where is the research to substantiate these assumptions? Where is the research to validate these claims? (That isn't based upon pre 1980 studies).
A few years ago, prior to all the economic meltdowns and bailouts and lost retirement assets, socioeconomic commentators were warning about the loss of the experienced worker pool available to employers. We heard about how Gen X and Y could never match the numbers of the Baby boomers reaching retirement age. We also heard how older workers desired to remain in the workplace longer as a matter of self worth, not just a matter of financial necessity.
'Self worth'. Now that's a Maslowian indicator of job dissatisfaction if I ever heard one! And having a fully qualified team member with vast experience to draw upon, cutting on boarding time and training costs is definitely an added ROI bonus.
So why this (unsubstantiated) increased use of OVERQUALIFIED in candidate screenings? Couldn't be age discrimination, as we all know that is an illegal discriminatory practice in employment settings.
There has to be another valid business reason we're missing. Due to the lack of hard research data, I really need your input. Let me know at joel@joelawhite.com or comment here.
Have A Nice Day!
Copyright 2010 Joel A White
Posts
What a great post. I hate the word "overqualified." Who is to say that experience doesn't mean something. Just because someone is making X at one company they wouldn't mind making Y at another company if it provided them with a better schedule or better environment. Don't discount an "old dog" if they're willing to learn new tricks.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Jenn - I took a significant drop in pay when I moved to Amarillo. But, I'm not on call 24/7 any more and I'm not required to do the work of 5 people. There's give and take in everything.
ReplyDeleteAs a tech worker, I seen both as in overqualified being age discrimination but worst these companies turn around and hire real overqualified people as in putting BSEE in vocational bench tech positions. Some companies are play cheep and do not want to pay and engineer’s salary most problem is Hr, management or the recruiting company. The best is deal with the immediate supervisor or techs.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is most engineers not going stick round, especially thawing down 50,000 to 100,000 for a degree and visions of 50,000+ salaries. Many are just in place temporary or angling for an engineering job. As things get better or see no engineering department cubical this will person will bolt and the company wasted time in bring the person up to speed and must go back to square one.
Another issue what one get the overqualified label is the manager does not want to hire somebody who can be a future competitor. The hiring manger does not want to hire a person who can take his or hers job or compeditor for a promotion.