Or how you think you can't pay for the available competencies you won't use but you end up using
You’ve probably heard a recruiter say or it was even you who said it, that it is hard to hire an overqualified candidate. As simple as that. Let’s break down this subject and draw (I hope) some valuable learnings both for the recruiters and the candidates.
First, the problem is that there is a problem with overqualified candidates and what bothers the most is that usually this problem comes down to… just money.
Understandably, we have certain budgets for certain positions, but most of the time we reject someone because we are afraid about how much money they would ask, without even asking them.
Let’s just say that we managed to go over the financial criteria (it is somehow solved, I will come back to this later), so the next problem we usually encounter is the judgement.
Some of the recruiters believe that the candidate would be hard to manage both as a candidate and as an employee. If we translate it:
she/he/they would ask hard questions, would want to get to the details, would ask “why” and the new recruit would come with all his experience and won’t do everything blindly without asking why and without trying to get to the bottom of problems.
Of course, this is the valuable candidate, the responsible one, the carrying one, can you imagine the not so valuable one, moreover that both are undesirable?
Since we are talking about judgement, let’s add the question that buzzes on everyone’s mind: “If the candidate is so qualified, why doesn’t he have a job or business by now?”.
I can’t even comment this, so I will get back to the solution to overcome the financial criteria I have mentioned above. Let’s find some assumptions to the assumptions below:
Maybe the candidate has been working for a long time in the same company and we know that in this case his salary increasing rhythm hasn’t been too alert;
The person's needs have changed: the candidate wants an environment where he would perform and is ready to make any (decent) compromise for this;
The candidate has been working in a toxic environment and has come to cherish simple and fair contexts where he can use his potential;
“The candidate knows too much” but he is ready to teach others without expecting some decorations or fancy job titles;
Might have been the manager who worked side by side with their people and now wants just to work, because the job was the job, not a management position;
Maybe it is something that you can offer and nobody else does and you can find out what by really listening to the person;
The person in front of you wants to learn continuously and if not from the job complexity, from the new context, from fully using his capabilities;
So next time you find an overqualified candidate, please review this list and give him a chance before saying no just by reading the CV.
Now that we surpassed the assumptions regarding the candidate and we are ready to know and listen to him, let’s take a look in our own kitchen and find the things we could do better:
1. Job granularity
Let’s face it, the specific job description and the naivety that we would find a perfect match are… not helping.
You can have a specific list of competencies, but you can’t have a person who is able, talented and perfect for that list.
Or you can have it, if the job is really simple and the system is predictable, but even here you will have to deal with sustainability: nobody capable would stay in a position where they doesn’t have things to learn anymore.
Don’t say that this is the catch, that you don’t look for the perfect match, but the one with potential because we know that we hardly asses the potential during the interview, moreover by just reading the CV.
2. Job granularity
It is not an error, it is simply the solution to problems you don’t even know you have.
If you break down your activity into blocks of competencies, you can select and combine them based on the employees you find. Just like a puzzle.
And you will be able to see always what competencies you don’t have, and what jobs do you need. For example, if we take the sales skills/competencies, you’ve probably observed that it is hard to find a good salesman who is also performing good administrative or back-office tasks.
That’s the moment you give the salesman his specific responsibilities and he can perform by focusing on them and you hire a sales back-office or assistant to deal with the repetitive tasks.
If we were to find a place for the overqualified candidate, we would give him broad responsibilities and we would not put him in a specific job description.
This way we would make good use of his capabilities (win for us) and he would be happy and engaged (win for him). Who gets to lose from this, huh?
3. Job rentability
Indeed, if the job requests smaller qualifications, it is simpler and the profit is according to this, we won’t be able to pay more if we get less. And we’re getting less from a competent employee not because of him, but because that’s what we asked from him.
But here you have to own it and describe accurately the job, not so pretentious as we are accustomed.
And then you have to assess the impact of the job: it is preferably to find a candidate with lower financial expectancies, but what’s the cost of lack of performance? Or what’s the gain that comes with performance? You may be surprised.
4. The availability of the competencies
Sometimes you must be ready to pay not only for the competencies you get to use, but also for all the available competencies. And you have to learn to be open to explore them and get ready to use in the future the ones that are not useful for you right now too. You are willing to grow continuously, aren’t you?
5. Don’t make assumptions
He won’t get demotivated or disengaged by default. It’s your job to find his place and integrate him.
If you give him the tools and the context, you will probably get the most loyal and engaged employee. You will also have the advantage of him using his particular skills to better solve the job problems.
6. Respect people, respect the market and respect yourself
From not judging by appearances, to really listening to people, to taking the opportunity to transform or challenge your company status quo with every exceptional person you bring.
If you are a recruiter, don’t juggle so easily with candidates between yes or no by the assumptions you make (at least confront, test and learn from them from time to time).
If you are an entrepreneur, think about how you designed your organisation and play with flexibility and with the idea that humans are unique. This way you might touch a breakthrough in your employer branding, but most importantly in attracting great people.
If you are a candidate, stay tuned. I will come back with you to address your side of the table. There are also some things you could do better.
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