KATHMANDU: With unemployment running high, it is difficult to find right job for number of people. Because of this, many job seekers are compelled to take jobs that are below their educational qualifications and experience. Hence, recruiters have tough time sorting out the right

résumés and many employers are on the lookout for employees who have far more experience than the job requires for benefit of the organisation.

“Dealing with overqualified staff is quite challenging and it is a recurring problem faced during hiring,” says Bharat Joshi, acting general manager of Hotel Yak & Yeti. About 15 per cent of the hotel’s employees are overqualified. According to Joshi, they have mostly hired such employees in administration section. “We define job specification and their responsibility in interview session. Still we usually have to deal with employees’ psychological aspects when overqualified staffs are hired,” he explains.

As overqualified employees obviously perform better, they can be the most valuable assets to an organisation and can also be the source of inspiration to other employees. But at the same time, there are downsides of hiring such staffs. As the time passes, there are equal chances of the employee getting bored, lacking motivation and having less job satisfaction. Hence, this can result in their underperformance.

Overqualified persons may not feel a sense of attachment to the position or the company. They could harbour some overconfidence towards management and peers, or have a strong sense of entitlement because they have more experience. Later on, they may expect more money and other incentives to stay. Once employers hire overqualified staffs, they face challenges to retain them in the organisation. Since a candidate is engaged in the work that is below his level of expertise and education, he will likely have his eyes open for a

job that is more suited for his calibre.

According to Anil Raj Bajracharya, human resource officer and senior administrator at Brihat Investments Pvt Ltd, retaining such employees is a real challenge for employers and they should be managed effectively to retain them. “Overqualified employee can be an important team player if employers create the working environment accordingly,” says Bajracharya, adding that when they are placed in challenging jobs, they seem to be motivated to become excellent employees. As per Bajracharya, almost 40 to 45 per cent of the CVs they receive are from overqualified applicants.

Similarly, Joshi opines that a fruitful strategy could be one that involves improving aspects of job complexity, such as freedom to make decisions, work structure, participative decision making, heightened responsibility for outcomes or results, clear and effective communication and most importantly, employers must ensure job mobility for overqualified staffs. Similarly, Bajracharya suggests assigning overqualified employees mentoring responsibilities for newly hired staff or asking them to lead a workplace quality improvement team. “This could lead to highly beneficial outcome for the organisation,” he adds.