With unemployment in double digits, job seekers are applying for and accepting jobs which pay less and are potentially less demanding than their previous positions.  Likewise, job incumbents are being promoted more slowly than ever before.  This often results in an employee feeling overqualified for his or her job and all the negative consequences that feeling overqualified can bring.

Applied organizational research has shown that perceived overqualification is related to negative job attitudes and a greater likelihood of the overqualified employee leaving the organization for a different job.  At the same time supervisors rate overqualified employees as better performers than their peers.  Overqualification is a double-edged sword- it’s beneficial to the organization to have overqualified employees but unsatisfying and even frustrating for the employees themselves.

Researchers found that the sense of overqualification could be greatly reduced by doing two things:

1.  Changing the work environment to allow more autonomy and

2.  Communicating to employees that they are valued and that their contributions to the job are appreciated and respected

In effect the managers of overqualified employees were using the positive impact of empowerment to overcome the negative impact of perceived overqualification.

Peter Scontrino

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