How to Approach the Overqualified Candidates Challenge

Despite BLS June data indicating an increase of 206,000 non-farm jobs and 4.1% unemployment, approximately 800,000 more people are out of work compared to this point a year ago. As a result, you may be seeing applications from overqualified candidates who are on the market.

The job market is so challenging for laid off workers trying to find a new role that they’re expanding the search parameters for the types of jobs they’d normally apply for, said Logan Marsh, the head of talent acquisition at appointment scheduling software company Calendly.

Marsh, who previously worked at Amazon and Microsoft, has experienced this from the perspective of a candidate, as well as the perspective of a recruiting professional.

“What [we’re seeing] here at Calendly is definitely a higher volume of candidates … overall for pretty much all our jobs. And we do see a lot of folks that have a lot of years of experience and have had higher-level titles who are reaching out and sharing interest for roles they may have done previously,” he said.

Marsh described it as “a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem.”

Impact of Overqualified Candidates on HR

Because of the volume of overqualified candidates in the talent pool right now, it could be negatively affecting your time-to-fill metrics.

The other area of talent acquisition productivity that may be suffering is candidate experience. “Candidates are potential customers. If you don’t respond in a timely manner to applicants — regardless of the source — that can look bad for the company,” Marsh said. “I remind my team very often that it’s not about getting to the right candidate … as fast as possible and forgetting about the rest.”

He shared these tips for HR pros:

1. Be communicative with candidates. “Don’t just send a cold email to a candidate and then not follow up,” Marsh said, suggesting scheduling a videoconferencing meeting.
2. Be transparent about next steps and timelines.
3. Share company content with candidates, such as press releases, the link to the company LinkedIn page, etc. These can influence an overqualified candidate’s willingness to continue with the hiring process.

Consider Tech Tools

To adequately deal with a high volume of candidates, it may take an automation solution that connects your applicant tracking system to your HRIS.

“I think a lot of these newer platforms and technologies, especially the ones that say they’re using AI, they’re trying to solve for the front of funnel. But it’s really that applicant stage, when [HR gets] potentially hundreds of applicants — how do you identify the best 10, 15 people right out of the gate?” Marsh said.

Regardless of what tool you use to screen candidates, he said, “You have to have a human at the end of the line that can reason, think on their feet and make quick decisions to connect on that human level.”

If a system isn’t optimized for the candidate experience that you want, only human oversight can pinpoint the problem and make changes.

Retaining Overqualified Candidates

The biggest risk of hiring an overqualified candidate for a job at your company is that if the person’s taking a pay cut to work at your organization, they may start looking for a new position somewhere else right away.

Marsh recommended identifying the aspirations, needs and wants of any desirable overqualified candidate you’re interviewing.

“When talking about [an overqualified candidate’s] background, connect the dots back to: ‘Here’s what the job is. Here’s the lay of the land of the company. Here’s what the team is looking for,'” he said.

“From a career perspective, we all have bills to pay. So that’s pretty important. Is the compensation element going to … at least meet what [they] have to have? I always encourage people to think about [their careers] as [non-linear]. … For folks that might feel like they’re taking a step back in title, pay or responsibilities, I would really think about it as an opportunity to dust off the skillsets that they haven’t used in awhile and learn something new at a new company. There’s always things that people can learn, regardless of the level or the title of the role.”