Note to HR Folks: Hiring Over-Qualified People Is A Smart Strategy

Corporate America needs an attitude adjustment. The hubris is nauseating.  Picture this. You are sitting in your office/cubicle/conference room/ knowing that  you have benefits/paycheck/job and you are telling someone who has been out of work for seven months that you can't hire them because they will be bored?

Trust me: when you have been out of work and are worried about feeding your family/the mortgage/bills/health insurance  no job is boring. It's a gift. A treasured gift.

 Maybe when we lived in the go-go economy of the early 2000's, it may have made sense to reject an applicant who was over-qualified because jobs were abundant. But this isn't a go-go economy, this is a NOVA economy.
Jobs are not abundant.

 I think businesses need to embrace the over qualified. They are good for business. Instead of spending lots of time training them, the over-qualified  can help mentor the rest of the staff. They have years of experience and expertise that you can tap into .

Being bored at work is not the issue when you don't have work. So HR folks imagine yourself in these shoes.One day you are a success in your profession. The next day no one wants to talk to you. Like a child star on a sitcom who can never find work again, thousands of employees are finding it tough to keep a career.

 CNN featured the Sandwich-board man - the MIT toy industry executive who as a last resort started walking the streets of NYC with a billboard asking for a job interview. The publicity worked. He is now gainfully employed.

Mika Brzezinski shared her own frustration of being out of work for a year after she was let go at CBS. At the time she was earning $500,000 and then no one wanted to hire her. She took a big step down and did freelance work reading 4 -30 second news headlines an evening.  That flexibility eventually led to her new high profile job on Morning Joe.

Now Chiara Sforza  tells her story in the New York Times feature, Preoccupations. Sforza went from being a bank vice president to a dog walker.

It was actually a relief when I was finally laid off. The company had notified us in March 2007 that the department was going to be outsourced to Manila, and I couldn’t stand the stress of waiting. I’ve been downsized several times over the years, but I always landed on my feet. Of course, I was in my 30s and 40s then. Now I’m in my 50s, and it makes a difference.

When I applied for other jobs I was overqualified for the available positions. I was willing to take a pay cut and a lesser title, but no one would give me an opportunity. I had been an accounts-payable supervisor years ago, so I even applied for those positions. Employers were afraid that I would become bored.

 

There are now millions of people looking for work. Hiring someone who says they want the job even if they are over-qualified is  an opportunity for organizations to bring in the best and the brightest .Who knows, the may be able to help develop strategies or processes that helps the organization increase productivity .Maybe they can be role-models for the less-qualified staff. Maybe they can mentor.

Just as retailers are slashing prices to get people to buy something/anything, think of these over-qualified applicants as employees on sale--deeply discounted, top of the line employees at unbelievable prices. It's a steal.