Are You Overqualified?

(Note to job-seekers only: LinkedIn is hosting a special webcast on March 28th to discuss this and other importance job-hunting ideas)

The most common question I’m asked whenever I speak to job-seekers is how to handle the problem of being overqualified. Following is a summary of the response included in The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired. It starts by first figuring out what’s driving your job-hunting efforts.

One way to do this is to position yourself on Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid shown in the graphic. Abraham Maslow was a mid 20th century psychologist who studied the behavior of high-performing individuals. In a 1943 paper, he suggested that people make predictable decisions based on their underlying behavioral needs. Some of these are low-order needs, like requiring water or food, other are higher-order needs like achievement and recognition. According to Maslow, a person couldn’t move to a higher level unless the needs of the lower level were satisfied first.

According to Maslow, and common sense, your job-hunting activity and related decision-making will be affected by whether you’re fully employed, under-employed or not employed at all. Even those in great jobs often entertain the possibility of something better if it satisfies an achievement need. On the other hand those who are unemployed or underemployed, will be driven largely by economic and security needs. In this case, once this lower-order economic need is met your satisfaction with the job itself will naturally decline. As a result your work performance will suffer and you’ll seek other job opportunities that meet a higher-order need. This is why employers are reluctant to hire people who appear “overqualified.” I’ve seen this happen often, so I agree, but there are some exceptions.

My advice to employers is to only hire people who are both competent and motivated to do the actual work required. If a person appears competent, but overqualified, I would only recommend hiring the person if he/she has done similar work in the recent past at a high level of performance. For example, a person who has been an engineering manager, but still does exceptional detailed design work and finds it extremely satisfying should be seriously considered. The caveat though is that the person has done this recently.

I remember speaking with a PhD in Chemical Engineering a number of years ago who complained he was considered overqualified even though he could do the work and was exceptional at it. I then asked him when he last did this type of work. He told me it was over 10 years ago, with the tag, “but it doesn’t matter.” But it does matter! This person was far beyond doing the type of work required, and would only do it under the pressure of an economic need. If you’re a job-seeker faced with similar concerns about being branded overqualified, there are a few you can do to disprove it, at least if it’s a false conclusion:

1) Prove you always work at peak levels regardless of the task at hand. Some people are blessed with an extraordinary work-ethic, commitment and level of responsibility. If you can demonstrate with real examples that you’re one of these rare people, an employer would be foolish in dismissing you out-of-hand. Multiple examples of proof are required though and they need to be recent, substantive, and relevant.

2) Demonstrate that you’ve done similar types of work recently in the past at high levels of quality. In this case you just need to demonstrate with actual examples of recent work, that the type of work the company requires for on-the-job success is work that both motivates you, and is work you’re good at.

3) Force the question to disprove the overqualified concern. Ask the interviewer to describe some of the biggest problems or challenges involved in the job. Used a forced-choice approach, like “is working on a cross-functional team a critical aspect of this project engineering position?” Asking “leading” questions like this gives you the chance to break the total job into sub-tasks that you've done recently. If you've done enough of the sub-tasks you'll be more seriously considered for the whole job.

4) Take a short-term temp or consulting position. Rather than asking the company to take the risk of you becoming dissatisfied due to being overqualified, suggest that you’ll be willing to prove both your competence and motivation on a trial basis. This could be in the form of a short-term assignment or doing some type of consulting project.

These are just a few ideas, but regardless of the approach you use, you must be fully prepared and self-confident enough to address the overqualified concern. This is especially important if the concern is unwarranted. The least effective approach is to do nothing.

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the Amazon best-selling author of Hire With Your Head (Wiley, 2007) and the award-winning Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules! His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, is now available as an Amazon Kindle eBook. You might want to join Lou's new LinkedIn group to discuss hiring related issues.