Overqualified employees may benefit organisations

Washington: Employers may be losing out by rejecting 'overqualified' job applicants, suggests a new study which found that employees tend to perform better when overqualification becomes a norm in the organisation.

Overqualification- the condition of employees who believe that their qualifications exceed the requirements of their jobs has been widely considered harmful for organisations, which is why most companies tend to screen out such job applicants.

"When individual employees feel that they are not the only 'big fish in the pond,' and when overqualification becomes a norm rather than exception within the group, they tend to have more favourable reactions toward their own overqualification status and perform better," researchers said.

"Managers may benefit from understanding that as overqualification becomes normalised in the workplace, it exerts a more positive influence over such behaviours as job performance and citizenship," said Jasmine Hu, assistant professor of management at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.