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logo    Overqualified


Every observant American worker knows enough to expect the company he works for to engage is some absurd business practices, but one of the most absurd is the practice of rejecting applicants who are deemed by the company to be overqualified. One recent job post I saw even stated explicitly, "Please do not apply if you feel that you might be over-qualified for the position." Yet I believe that if any of the people running these companies were asked whether s/he would prefer an overqualified surgeon or a barely competent one when needing extensive surgery, all would prefer the former.  The same would be true of attorneys if s/he were accused of a serious crime or even of airline pilots when s/he needed to fly. When a service is required for some serious condition, nobody prefers the barely competent. Yet when it comes to employees, businesses often prefer the barely competent.

Businesses justify this practice by saying that the overqualified would be likely to continue seeking better jobs and would leave as soon as one was found, but this justification makes no mathematical sense. The number of higher paying jobs is considerably lower than the number of low or moderately paying jobs, so the chances of finding a better job are considerably lower for an overqualified worker than for a barely competent one. When companies are managed in ways that are dissatisfying to their employees, the chances are greater that the barely qualified will leave. And more likely than not, what causes workers to remain in the jobs they have is the degrading process of job hunting.

But this false justification is trivial in comparison to the horrendous economic and social consequences of the practice. When employees know that the overqualified are often excluded from the competition, they have no incentive to get good at their jobs, since becoming good will merely make it more difficult for them to find jobs elsewhere if the need arises. Not being good at their jobs entails that the services and products they produce will be barely acceptable. As the quality of these products and services deteriorates, they become less marketable and command lower prices. Difficult to market, lower-priced products result in lower profits. In attempts to maintain profits, one alternative businesses have used is to abandon domestic production, moving it to low-wage countries which works only so long as consumer-income is sufficient to continue to purchase the products and services. Moving production off shore doesn't work when consumer income is insufficient, because even low-priced products and services are expensive to those without sufficient income. In short, the consequence of the practice is an economic collapse, which entails severe hardship and political instability of the kind that often destroys nations, for in the long run, mediocre products and services do not sell well.

Some economists are beginning to realize that the only effective stimulus needed to counter the current economic situation is job creation. But even that won't work well if the newly created jobs rely on the barely qualified. These practices led to the near collapse of America's Big Three automakers when faced with Japanese competition, and although these American firms have made efforts to recover, none has really succeeded. Could that be because barely competent employees are still the foundation for their businesses? (6/7/2008)