Overqualified Employees: Making the Best of a Potentially Bad Situation for Individuals and Organizations

Berrin Erdogan, Talya N. Bauer, José Peiró and Donald M. Truxillo

Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2011, vol. 4, issue 2, 215-232

Abstract: One of the “truisms” of personnel selection is that overqualified applicants are likely to be a poor fit and thus experience low job satisfaction and performance and higher turnover. Recently, the issue of overqualification has come to the forefront because of the economic downturn, especially in some European Union countries where unemployment rates are extremely high. However, empirical research on overqualification in the industrial–organizational/organizational behavior literature is limited. In this article, we argue that although there may be drawbacks to overqualification for both organizations and employees, overqualification may also provide a number of positive outcomes for workers and employers alike. We review the limited research on overqualification, noting the positive and negative consequences of overqualification and the conditions under which overqualified employees may be a boon to organizations. We conclude by recommending some possible research streams to better understand the overqualification phenomenon and by making recommendations for organizational practices.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:inorps:v:4:y:2011:i:02:p:215-232_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().