Should you hire an ‘overqualified’ candidate?

With unemployment still relatively high and lots of charity professionals currently searching for a job, we’ve noticed that not for profit organisations are receiving more applications from ‘overqualified’ candidates.  But employers can be reluctant to consider these candidates, even though they would certainly be able to handle the role.

In this blog post, we look at what overqualified means and the pros and cons of hiring an overqualified candidate.

What is overqualified?

Candidates are described as overqualified when they are skilled or educated beyond the requirements for the role.  For example, while a person specification for a role may require a bachelor’s degree, employers could receive applications from candidates with a master’s degree.  Or employers could request candidates with some previous experience of that role, and receive applications from jobseekers with over ten years’ experience.

However, having lots of education or experience does not necessarily make a candidate overqualified.  The key is whether that education or experience is relevant to the role.  If not, they are really starting at the same level as any other candidate.

It is also very important to steer clear of any age discrimination when determining if candidates are overqualified.  Simply having worked for a long period of time does not automatically make an applicant overqualified.

Traditional objections to overqualified candidates
If employers are looking for certain skills and experience, you might think that a candidate exceeding their expectations would be snapped up, but many organisations are reluctant to consider overqualified candidates.  One of the most common reasons cited is a fear that the candidate will expect a higher salary in exchange for their qualifications.  The other is an assumption that the candidate is only using this role as a placeholder and will leave as soon as a better opportunity presents itself – this is a particular worry in the current job market, with many candidates agreeing to take any job purely to avoid unemployment.

Employers may also have concerns that an overqualified candidate would not be challenged or fully engaged in the role and become unproductive and unhappy.  One disgruntled employee can then have a knock-on effect on the rest of the team.

Dispelling the myths

Overqualification does not automatically lead to lower job satisfaction or higher turnover.  In a study from the US, sales associates who were thought to be overqualified actually performed better than their peers, and the more empowered they were in their role, the more likely they were to stay put.  Indeed, nearly half of graduates are now considered overqualified for their first role.

Candidates have a huge range of motivations for taking a charity job and overqualified applicants may have a very good reason for wanting that particular role, rather than simple desperation for a job.  They could be downshifting and looking to achieve a better work/life balance, or wanting to change sectors or roles following a previous unsatisfactory career move, or they could be moving to a new location.

The interview stage is the best time to determine an overqualified candidate’s level of seriousness about the role.  Questions like “Can you describe your favourite job from the past and what you did?” or “What did you not like doing in former jobs?” can help define their motivations and determine whether they would be a good fit for your team.  Have confidence in your organisation’s culture; if you choose to work for your organisation, other people will also want to.

Some ‘hidden’ benefits

There are some less obvious benefits to hiring an overqualified candidate that some employers would not immediately consider.  For example, it can be good for morale overall, as a more experienced employee will be able to pick up the work more quickly, relieving the rest of the team from having to cover the responsibilities.  This is particularly important during this period of belt-tightening, when many employees are already having to take on extra tasks.

In addition, most teams function best with a mixture of people, not just clones of your current or previous employees.  Someone with unexpected skills and lots of life experience may bring something extra to the table that you have not previously considered.

If an overqualified candidate has a good reason for wanting to take your role, chances are that they have really considered what they want to do and may actually be a better long-term proposition than a candidate who exactly fits the person specification.  For example, a jobseeker with lots of commercial experience may move into the charity sector looking for a more meaningful role.  Getting promoted or moving on may therefore be lower on their list of priorities than a candidate moving up within the sector.

Future proof your team

When considering a candidate who is overqualified for the job, it’s always worth looking at the big picture.  When making hiring decisions, the best leaders don’t just consider current needs, but also look to the future.

Overqualified candidates often have other skills in areas that are not required for a particular role but may be useful for the organisation as a whole.  This gives them greater flexibility for the future and could allow them to accomplish things in the future that you have not considered part of that role.  Rather than just fulfilling an immediate need, they could help your organisation grow and achieve even more.

These employees can also improve the skill set of the team as a whole, as they could mentor or train up others to their level.  They can also serve as a model for your employees and help challenge them to bring productivity up.  Having extra skills in your team can also give you the flexibility to react to challenges or opportunities that may arise in the future.  Making full use of their skills will also make them a more engaged employee.

Be honest

If you are considering an overqualified candidate for a position, it’s extremely important to be up front about the role’s potential right from the start.  Being honest about salary, benefits and promotion prospects will help to weed out candidates really looking for something else and will avoid an applicant expecting too much from a role.  But if you think they may be temporarily underutilised, but there is great potential for the future, make sure you make that clear.

You could use phone screening to go through these details, check that the candidate is happy with the terms and weed out those with unrealistic expectations before interview stage.

It is also very important to confirm that their manager would be comfortable working with them and vice versa.  Sometimes it can be difficult to manage an employee who has more years of experience than you do.  Make sure you explore this thoroughly at interview – again, it is worth being completely honest and asking them straight out if they foresee any problems.

It can’t hurt…

Rather than rejecting them out of hand, it’s always worth at least considering an overqualified candidate.  After all, they would certainly be able to handle the role advertised  Often it can be difficult to fully judge a candidate’s motivations and dedication to a role without at least offering them an opportunity to meet with you face to face in an interview.

If you do interview them and you feel that the candidate would still not be a good fit for your organisation, that could help you to refine your person specification and direct your job search.

Hiring an overqualified candidate can be a risk, but sometimes you have to take risks to realise your organisation’s full potential.  When weighing up the pros and cons, there are often more benefits to hiring an overqualified employee than downsides.  And even if they do turn out to be only there short-term, they could still make a positive long-term impact on your organisation.

There are also ways to mitigate some of the risk of hiring an overqualified employee.  You could offer them the role on a temporary or contract basis, to see how they will actually turn out on the job and to get the role filled.

There is a definite move in the commercial world to take advantage of the current candidate-heavy job market and actively seek out overqualified employees to get extra value for money.  Perhaps the charity sector should also be more open to capitalising on this talent glut.  After all, sometimes more is simply more.

Using behavioural interviewing to look behind the mask

What is behavioural interviewing?

Behavioural interviewing is an increasingly popular type of job interview, where an interviewee is asked to provide examples from their past employment of specific situations and go through how they behaved in those circumstances.  The logic is that past performance is predictive of future performance, ie how you behaved in the past will forecast how you will behave in the future.

Why use behavioural interviewing?

Behavioural interviewing is said to be the most accurate predictor of a candidate’s future performance.  Rather than simply taking a candidate's word for it that they have the skills and capabilities required for the role, this method of interviewing allows them to prove their worth.

Traditional interviewing, using open questions like “tell me about your past work experience”, often doesn’t give you enough data to accurately evaluate a candidate.  As each candidate can choose to answer these questions in a completely different way, it also makes it hard to compare candidates in an objective way.  Ultimately, a traditional interview tends to mostly judge candidates on how well they interview, rather than how well they will do the job.

Situational interviews are better, as they ask the candidate to describe how they might handle a certain situation.  However, this does allow the interviewee to talk about what they might do, rather than stick to what they did do.

By focussing purely on actual examples, behavioural interviewing makes it easier for an interviewer to objectively judge how a candidate will perform in the role.  Each question can be followed up by further questions to get more detail and depth on specific behaviours, such as “what factors did you consider when you made that decision?” or “what were you thinking at that point?”.  This makes it very difficult for interviewees to exaggerate or ‘fudge’ their answers to give you the responses they think you want to hear.

Behavioural interviews are also a really good way to discover new talent and avoid age discrimination, as they do not require the candidate to have a great deal of direct work experience, but concentrate more on transferrable skills and competencies.  Answers do not necessarily need to come from the workplace but could use examples from volunteer experience, extra-curricular activities or even family life.

Preparing your questions

Before you start putting together your list of questions for the interview, you need to establish exactly what behaviours are necessary for the role.  Use your job description and person specification to put together a list of the key responsibilities for the role and then determine how an employee would be judged successful in those responsibilities.

You’ll then need to think about the characteristics and traits necessary in an employee to deliver those successful outcomes.  Look at current successful employees in similar roles, and the qualities and skills they possess, to form a picture of your ideal candidate.  You should also consider your organisation's culture and whether you want your new employee's personality to be similar or complementary. A typical profile would include competencies like interpersonal skills, decision-making skills, creativity, flexibility, enthusiasm, time management etc.  Stick to the most important skills or you could be interviewing all day!

Once you’ve got a list of your ideal behavioural traits, you can start to make up a list of questions to judge interviewees against.  Make sure you use the same questions, in the same order, for every interview so it’s easy to compare candidates.

Typical behavioural interview questions

Behavioural interview questions are generally more specific and more probing than traditional interview questions.  Each question should be designed to elicit an example of performance from past experience and should be followed up with further tailored questions to get to the key behaviour shown.

Typical questions include:

• Give an example of an occasion when you used logic to solve a problem.
• Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you achieved it.
• Describe a decision you made that was unpopular and how you handled implementing it.
• Have you gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, how?
• What do you do when your schedule is interrupted? Give an example of how you handle it.
• Have you had to convince a team to work on a project they weren't thrilled about?
  How did you do it?
• Have you handled a difficult situation with a co-worker? How?
• Tell me about how you worked effectively under pressure.

You should be asking two-three behavioural questions for each competency to give you enough information to make an accurate assessment of the candidate’s ability.

STAR statements

When answering a behavioural interview question, candidates are expected to use the STAR method to shape their responses.  When all candidates answer the question in a similar way, it makes it much easier to compare them afterwards.

STAR is an acronym for the four parts of an answer to a typical behavioural question:

Situation – the background to the example.  The situation the candidate was in or the problem that faced them. 

Task – the ultimate goal or what the candidate needed to achieve.

Action – what the candidate did and the reasons why they made this decision.  If the action was a team initiative, it is important for the candidate to focus on their role only.

Result – what did the action achieve and was the goal accomplished?  It’s not necessary for all examples to have positive results, as long as a candidate can justify their actions and show that they learnt from the results.

Assessing interviewees

Once all the interviews have been completed, use your interview notes to rate each candidate on the answers they have given.  One of the benefits of using behavioural interviews is that it helps avoid bias in interviewing, so stick to a scoring system.

For each question, identify the key behaviours that would separate an excellent candidate from a poor one.  The interviewee can then be scored against each competency.

A typical rating scale would be 1-5 where 4 or 5 was an excellent demonstration of that competency, 2 or 3 was adequate and 1 was extremely poor.

Things to consider

• Make sure your list of desired behaviours is actually reflected in the job description and person specification that you use to advertise the role, or you will end up with unsuitable candidates for interview.

•  Make sure candidates know it will be a behavioural interview when they are invited, giving them a chance to prepare their answers.  Giving a candidate the chance to prepare will get you better interview answers and should help you judge their responses more easily.

• Taking very detailed notes is an essential part of the behavioural interview process, so that you can score a candidate’s performance accurately.
   
• If you are using a recruitment agency like TPP Not for Profit, they should be able to help you put your list of desirable competencies together and help you construct behavioural interview questions.

Useful Links

Lists of behavioural competencies:
http://questionsininterview.com/list-of-core-behavioral-competencies
www.nielsongroup.com/articles/list_of_competencies.pdf
www.hr-guide.com/data/A302.htm

Top Ten Behavioral Interview Questions

75 Behavioural Interview Questions To Select The Best Candidate

TPP’s guide for candidates to competency-based interviews

Interview questions you should avoid (and what to ask instead)

Job interviews are the best opportunity a recruiter has to find out whether a jobseeker has the skills and personal qualities required for the role, as well as determining whether the candidate’s personality would fit with the organisation’s culture.

There are some interview questions that are obviously discriminatory and avoided by almost all employers. However, when trying to build a friendly rapport during an interview, it can be easy to innocently stray into ‘grey’ areas which may seem harmless but are in fact discriminatory, and therefore potentially illegal. Employers may think they are making conversation but could be leaving themselves open to litigation.

In this blog, TPP examines how you can find out all the information you need in an interview without straying into potentially litigious territory

This information is for guidance purposes only and not legal advice. Not all the questions below are necessarily illegal, but it is best practice to avoid straying into any of these areas.

Before you start the interview…

Although anti-discrimination legislation can feel like a minefield, it doesn’t have to complicate the interview process.

By simply asking questions in a different way, you can find out the information you really want to know (ie the candidate’s suitability for the role) without asking the interviewee to divulge information about their personal life (that you don’t need to make a decision).

The exception to these guidelines is when there is an occupational requirement for a role, when an employer can objectively justify why a specific type of candidate is required, eg a religious organisation may stipulate that only candidates of that religion should apply, if it is a genuine requirement of the role.

Place of Birth, Ethnicity or Religion

Employers should steer clear completely of any questions regarding a candidate’s birthplace, background or religious affiliation. If an applicant has an unusual name, don’t ask about its origin, as the answer could possibly be grounds for discrimination.

While it is legal to ask about ethnic background on application forms, this is for monitoring purposes only and usually anonymous, and should never be brought up in an interview.

You may want to ask about religious practices to find out about any scheduling conflicts around weekends or religious holidays, but you should never ask a candidate about their beliefs. Instead, simply confirm they are able to work when they will be required to.

Don’t ask: What country are you from? Where were you born?
Do ask: Are you eligible to work in the UK?

Don’t ask: What is your native language?
Do ask: This job requires someone who speaks more than one language. What languages are you fluent in?

Don’t ask: What religion do you practice? Which religious holidays do you observe?
Do ask: Can you work in the days/schedule required for this role?

Marital Status, Children or Sexual Preference

Asking questions about someone’s children is usually just making conversation, but not appropriate in an interview setting. You cannot ask a candidate if they are planning a family, if they are pregnant or about their childcare arrangements.

This also applies to questions about marital status, which could be grounds for discrimination, as some employers may believe that married employees are more stable, or single people may have more time to devote to the job.

Any mention of an applicant’s sexual preference should also obviously be avoided.

Don’t ask: Do you have or plan to have children?
Do ask: Are you available to work overtime on occasion? Can you travel?

Don’t ask: How many children do you have? Do you have childcare arrangements in place if we need you to work out of hours?
Do ask: This job may require some overtime work on short notice. Is this a problem for you? What days/hours are you available to work?

Don’t ask: Is this your maiden name?
Do ask: Are any of your references or qualifications under another name?

Don’t ask: If you went on maternity leave, would you come back to work afterwards?
Do ask: What are your long term career goals?

Gender or Age

Steer clear of any questions that reference a candidate’s age or gender. You should certainly ask about their ability to handle the challenges of the role, but never imply that their gender or age may affect this.

The only question regarding age which is acceptable is to establish whether they are of the minimum age required for the role. A prime example of what not to say to an applicant would be to ask of someone in their sixties, “and how many more years do you see yourself in the workforce?”

Don’t ask: We’ve always had a woman/man in this role. How do you think you will handle it?
Do ask: What can you bring to this role?

Don’t ask: How do you feel about managing men/women?
Do ask: Tell me about your previous experience of managing staff.

Don’t ask: How old are you?
Do ask: Are you over the age of 18?

Don’t ask: How much longer do you plan to work before you retire?
Do ask: What are your long term career goals?

Don’t ask: When did you graduate?
Do ask: Do you have a degree or other qualification related to this role?

Location

It is very common in interviews to ask about commuting distances and times, to make sure the candidate will be able to get to work on time. However, this can be difficult to judge, as how far people are willing to commute varies wildly. Some employees are willing to travel for over an hour, while others think 20 minutes is too long.

In addition, asking someone about where they live could create discrimination issues if it is in a neighbourhood heavily populated by a specific ethnic group or social class.

Don’t ask: How far would your commute be?
Do ask: Are you able to start work at 9am?

Disability or Illness

Interviewers should be careful around any questions related to illness. Asking a candidate to explain any gaps in their CV due to long term sick leave is acceptable, but asking directly if they have any health conditions is not.

Questioning a person over a disability and whether or not it would affect their ability to do the job is grounds for disability discrimination.

Don’t ask: How many sick days did you take last year?
Do ask: How many unscheduled days of work did you miss last year?

Lifestyle Choices

An employer cannot ask an interviewee whether they smoke or how much alcohol they consume. While an employer can set rules for professional conduct and substance use at work, what an employee does in their own time should have no bearing on whether they are suitable for the job.

While you can ask about criminal records on an application form, it’s generally not a good idea to bring it up at interview. Likewise, while some roles require a CRB check, you cannot discuss the findings in a job interview.

Questions about political affiliations or group memberships should not be asked during interviews, unless they are relevant to the role in question. Although you might want to find out if they are involved in any activities that may have an impact on their time commitments, it is better to simply ask if they are able to commit to the role.

Don’t ask: Do you belong to any clubs or organisations?
Do ask: Are you a member of any professional group that’s relevant to this role?

Don’t ask: Are you a member of the Territorial Army/Special Constabulary/Other Volunteer Force?
Do ask: Do you have any upcoming commitments that would require extensive time away from work?

Height or weight

Questions about a candidate’s weight or height are also best avoided unless there are certain minimum or maximum requirements required for the role.

Don’t ask: How tall are you?
Do ask: Are you able to reach items on a shelf that’s five feet tall?

Don’t ask: How much do you weigh?
Do ask: Are you able to lift boxes weighing up to 50 pounds?

How TPP can help

If you need more help with interviewing, please see our articles on Interviewing Advice and 6 common interview mistakes employers make. TPP are always happy to advise our clients on the best questions to ask to rate a candidate’s suitability for a role.