Do Employers Prefer Overqualified Graduates? A Field Experiment

Dieter Verhaest, Elene Bogaert, Jeroen Dereymaeker, Laura Mestdagh and Stijn Baert

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 2018, vol. 57, issue 3, 361-388

Abstract: We test whether employers prefer overqualified to adequately qualified job candidates. To this end, duos of fictitious applications by bachelor's and master's graduates are sent to real job openings with a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement. For the overall sample, we find that overqualified master's graduates are 19 percent more likely to be directly invited for a job interview and 11 percent more likely to get any positive reaction. This relative advantage for overqualified workers is found to be higher for bottleneck occupations. Relative preferences also differ across employers within labor†market segments.

Date: 2018
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Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society is currently edited by Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter, Steven Raphael and stevenraphael@berkeley.edu

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