If you hire someone who is “overqualified” you still have that chance, the thing to determine is WHY they want to work with your company? If you are that concerned about them simply using you, have them sign a contract negotiating the minimum amount of time they have to be with the company if they decide to work for you.

The biggest problem is that many times you have an HR department filled with people who have no idea how to do a job, and have never done the job in their life. What they think might be needed, and what actually is needed tends to be two different things.

Take medical for example. You have two doctors. One has been a doctor for 15 years. He became a department head after 8 years, and then decided to go into research. He specialized in open heart surgery, during his research for the last four years he’s discoverd better ways of surgical thread integration to lessen the impact and improve healing. He isn’t happy with the research lifestyle and wants to go back to being a doctor. Any doctor.

The other has just finished residency and has no other experience. He is fresh, new, and has his entire career ahead of him.

You have an opening for a general practicioner (or an easier way to say that, is the low guy on the totem pole at the Hospital ER room) during the evening and night shift.

Who do you want to hire. Who would you want to work on you? I’d choose the first guy any day of the week.

He’s overqualified, could be looking to have a foot in the door for a better position…and he’s going to do a better job while he’s there.

The younger guy may stick around a while longer, but have no illusions he’s going to stay on that job in that shift. It’s a drain and stressful. Plus, he’s not going to be as good as the one with experience in all likelihood, no matter how much more we may like him.

I think patients would be MUCH happier to have the guy who’s dealt with a ton of medical problems, had a good long career and isn’t basically the guy fresh out of medical school and residency as opposed to the new guy…even if the position t ypically GOES to the new guy (or worse, someone just getting into residency)

Think that only applies to doctors and experience?

Think again. The guy with experience SHOULD win out everytime. The fact that they don’t is one of the major problems with HR.

You want to know why MS did so well for years? Because they didn’t believe in stupid stuff like overqualified…they did tests to see if you were actually qualified or not and CHOSE the highest qualifed from those tests. Overqualifed or not.

The trouble is an employer will never confess, or write down, the real reason why they won’t employ you.

My previous employer, when looking for my replacement, for example simply went through an agency saying ‘no thank you.’ What they didn’t say was ‘we know it’s bad practice these days for you to put candidate age on a CV, but we worked out how old he was based on when he left school and started work. When we worked that out we put his CV in the bin’ and ‘we liked your candidate, but when we realised she had grey hair we decided she was too old for the job.’

I’m actually feeling guilty for not whistle blowing back then because of how the credit crunch is biting ever harder so they might be facing a lawsuit sooner or later.

When your ‘face doesn’t fit’ it means your more relaxed, more confident and more intelligent than the person interviewing you. Either that or the manager is a homophobe who thinks you’re gay. Very occasionally it might be because they find your religion offensive and are worried you might ruin their Friday night binge drinking sessions.

The trouble is this is real life. It’s not right but it’s not possible to do much about either. The only way to combat it is to beat it in the market place. Most people, in my view, are appalled by ageism, racism, homophobia, religious discrimination and sexism in the workplace. The only way to defeat it is to refuse to work for that sort of culture. I can promise you even today there are plenty of companies out there, big companies in fact, who are on the right side.

I have been told that I’m overqualified.

I think this equates to we don’t want to hire anybody over 40.

This practice discourages companies from even considering candidates who are ‘over-qualifed’ even if they would have been willing to take a lessor salary.

So many times, ‘policy’ works against both the company and the employee. A case by case consideration would be a much better practice.