Overqualification Theory, Research, and Practice: Things That Matter
In our focal article, we contended that overqualified employees may present unique advantages to hiring organizations and that decisions regarding overqualified employees should be made considering the strengths as well as potential limitations of employing overqualified employees. In this response to commentaries on our original article, we identify distinctions researchers should pay attention to. Specifically, measurement of overqualification (whether objective or subjective measures are used), dimension of overqualification in question (overeducation, being overskilled, overintelligence, or overexperience), when and from whose perspective overqualification is assessed (before or after e…
Overqualified Employees: Making the Best of a Potentially Bad Situation for Individuals and Organizations
One of the “truisms” of personnel selection is that overqualified applicants are likely to be a poor fit and thus experience low job satisfaction and performance and higher turnover. Recently, the issue of overqualification has come to the forefront because of the economic downturn, especially in some European Union countries where unemployment rates are extremely high. However, empirical research on overqualification in the industrial–organizational/organizational behavior literature is limited. In this article, we argue that although there may be drawbacks to overqualification for both organizations and employees, overqualification may also provide a number of positive outcomes for worker…
Perceived overqualification, relative deprivation, and person-centric outcomes: The moderating role of career centrality
Abstract In this study, we develop and test a model examining why and when perceived overqualification relates to career satisfaction and subjective well-being. In a sample of 143 new university graduates in Spain with data collected across two time periods, we showed that perceived overqualification interacted with career centrality to predict relative deprivation, which in turn was related to lower career satisfaction, positive affect, and life satisfaction, as well as higher negative affect. Further, perceived overqualification had negative main effects on career satisfaction, negative affect, and life satisfaction. The results suggest the importance of perceived overqualification for we…