Hiring overqualified staffs

Program words of wisdom:-
If it can go wrong it will - Murphy's law.
If it can't possibly go wrong, it will - O'Malley's corollary to Murphy's law.
It will go wrong in the worst possible way - Sod's law.
If there is a 50% chance of something going wrong then 9 times out of 10 it will.


In the mid '80s, I had a guy Mr Z (same age as me) reporting to me at work who did the extra one year secondary "Remove Class" while I went straight to "Form 1" hence I had graduated earlier, 1 year lead start working experience to be his boss. After a few years, he left for another organisation. The Plant is closing down, so I moved on attending job interview with another organisation CEO. I got the new job and was surprisingly introduced to Mr Z as my new boss! Respecting each other's role, we work fine for over 3 years having him as my boss, knowing I could be overqualified to be his subordinate.

Back to 2009, I do prefer having overqualified staff reporting to me. Overqualified could range from the amount of experience, education or credentials, was a more senior role or title or highly paid previously.

Here are the 3 key benefits of having them on board my team.

Overqualified candidates
1.usually have a better capabilities to do the job immediately and quickly add value with very short learning curve, and many contingency ideas on how to resolve issues.

2. add value beyond role. Approaching task differently, they thinks beyond the role and foresee other issues and possibilities, seeing broader perspective on other stakeholders.

3. provide build-in-bench strength to the organisation, ability to expand his responsibilities.

Conventional wisdom suggest otherwise, while not every situation are ideal, overqualified candidates may prove to be huge and unexpected assets to our organisation.


Kacak5 Management