Is Your Candidate Good Overqualified or Bad Overqualified?
By Brenda Abdilla
Recruiting during times of high unemployment can be an exercise in extreme patience. Candidates can be relentlessly persistent with their follow-up, and very often they are overqualified for positions for which they apply. Overqualified candidates can be a good thing –-but they can be a bad thing too.
The risks of an overqualified hire are threefold:
1) they may leave you as soon as the economy comes back;
2) if they secretly loathe their jobs your company could miss out on the ideas and commitment of an eager and better qualified person; and
3) they may undermine the chain of command because they are accustomed to being at a higher level.
However, this is also a time when many “rock star” producers are switching gears and going back to what they truly love to do. Your company could benefit from people who can relate to management, produce with ease and bring a wealth of experience to their positions.
Bad reasons to hire overqualified applicants:
• You feel sorry for them. If they have managed to make you feel pity or guilt, they are likely to elicit the same emotions from their co-workers and your customers. Give them a referral or a quality connection –-not a job.
• They have answers to overcome your every objection. Job applicants have access to all kinds of resources to help them prepare answers to your tough questions. If the match feels too good to be true but you feel compelled to proceed anyway, then greed might be making your decision here. Look again more closely.
Good reasons to hire an overqualified applicant:
• Everything makes sense. If the applicants sincerely address your objections, and everything else makes sense (the timing, the candidates’ experience, etc.), it may not be too good to be true. It just makes sense for the applicant and especially for your company.
• They are willing to share some of the risks. Consider hiring people on a contract basis for six to nine months, limiting your exposure while you make sure they are a good fit. Or during salary negotiations, see if they are willing to split the risks over time with a smaller start now and a bump at the six-month mark.
Brenda Abdilla is the president of Management Momentum. She founded it to focus on a small number companies and to utilize her passion for improving sales and management performance. Contact her at 303-456-1210 or www.managementmomentum.net.
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