Are Overqualified Candidates Underrated?

Conventional wisdom says that hiring candidates who are overqualified for a job just results in boredom and a quick departure from the company. This can make life difficult for those trying to switch directions in their careers who are happy to take a lower level position as an entrance into a new industry or job function, and those hit hard by the recession and in need of a job, any job, even one that's a step down.

If you're one of those candidates whose qualifications raise interviewers' eyebrows, take note. There's new evidence you can use to argue your position when a hiring managers suggests you might be a bit overqualified.

A new study in the Journal of Applied Psychology surveys a nationwide sample of 5,000 adults labor-force behavior over a 25-year period from the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and concludes that having more skills than a job demands actually decreases the chance the worker will voluntarily leave the position. Anthony Nyberg from the University of South Carolina, who led the research, explains:

A manager trying to fill a job that demands less-than-top-level smarts should never reject a candidate out of hand just because the applicant's score on the company's intelligence tests labels him or her as smarter than the job requires. If anything, our research suggests that such a candidate could be expected to stay longer and perform better than an applicant whose scores make him supposedly a better fit.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user Steph Anderson, CC 2.0)