Ability Discrimination and the ‘Über-Qualified’: Not Just a Matter of ‘Over-Qualification’

That's not a valid work email account. Please enter your work email (e.g. you@yourcompany.com)
Please enter your work email
(e.g. you@yourcompany.com)

Being “over-qualified” is the familiar reason or excuse given by those doing the hiring for why superior ability loses out in job competition. But are there other ways in which ability becomes a liability?

Yes, for example, when that ability is an “über-qualification”.

Here “über-qualification” is defined as

  1. a job-irrelevant standout skill, experience, motivation or credential that more or less guarantees being rejected for reasons other than conventional “over-qualification” (e.g., photographic memory, below)
  2. a job-relevant qualification that would benefit the company, but not the interviewer or (some of) his colleague(s) (e.g., because of direct workplace competition with them, also below)
  3. a qualification that would benefit the economy, humanity, the planet or a specific business sector, but to the detriment of the hiring company, hiring personnel, other employees and/or their associates, including suppliers, retailers and distributors (see the Edison illustration, below).

Consider the case of a job applicant with an “eidetic” (photographic) memory, interviewing for the CIA or Boeing. Hiring him could be very risky, because of his ability to record sensitive documents, e.g., C.I.A.-operative files or Boeing drawing-board designs.

Technically, he’s not “over-qualified”; no, he’s “dangerously-qualified”—itself an instance of being “über-qualified” (definition subsection #3, above). Anyway, irrespective of how he’s labeled, he doesn’t get hired. Gifted, not “over-qualified”, but still not hired—precisely because of his extraordinary talent to do something the job doesn’t require. In this specific instance, “über-qualified” and “dangerously-qualified” mean “spy-qualified” (Boeing) or “double agent-qualified” (C.I.A.).

Clearly, being über-qualified in these ways is different from being “over-qualified”, even in instances where “over-qualified” is not a euphemism or a lame excuse.

Of course, there are the obvious cases of euphemism, namely, refusal to hire from fear of competition and replacement by the more gifted candidate, nonetheless explained as a case of being “over-qualified”. Such rejection can more accurately be described as triggered by fear of the über-qualified (definition sense #2).

That fear haunts the minds of professionals tasked with hiring other professionals to do the same job, e.g., account executive, editor, recruiter or assistant project manager.  Although passed over because he’s “rival-qualified”—actually a variant of “dangerously qualified”, the rejected applicant will hear the predictable mantra, “over-qualified”.

Many years ago, the U.S.-based satiric Journal of Irreproducible Results  ran a piece about a “golden rule” of editorial hiring: An editor will not want to hire a writer or another editor who is so good as to make him look bad; on the other hand, he won’t want to hire one who is inferior, since that too will make him look bad. Logic compels the conclusion that a hiring editor in that position will select someone who may be appropriately described as “mittel-qualified” (German, for “middle”, on analogy with “über” (“over”, “above”)).

This is how a course between hiring the “over-qualified” and “under-qualified” is navigated in screening job-relevant credentials and the “over-qualified” (and under-qualified) applicants who (don’t) possess them.

If “truth in hiring” legislation covered euphemisms such as “over-qualified”, there would be more job interviews that go like this imagined one that follows, for a job with an advanced propulsion systems corporation:

Interviewer: “So, I see you’ve got ten years experience at NASA working on advanced plasma-injection systems, three Ph.D.s—one in nuclear physics, one in aeronautical engineering and one in mathematics…Hmmm…You’ve also won the Fields Medal in mathematics and hold four patents on solar-panel propulsion systems and taught aeronautical engineering graduate courses at Cal Tech, where you got two of your Ph.D.s.”

Candidate: “Actually, that will soon be four Ph.D.s. I’m finishing up my dissertation in my mechanical engineering Ph.D. program at M.I.T. I would have completed it sooner, but I’ve been on assignment for the past six months—‘on loan’, as it were, to the Russians, assisting with modifications to their space-station re-entry vehicle propulsion systems. I understand that this is an area of research you have been active in, too.”

Interviewer: “Yes, I’m finishing up my Ph.D. in Aztec archaeology, as a complement to my master’s thesis on ancient Mayan-astronaut propulsion systems…….(pause)……..(pause)……(much longer pause). Well, your credentials and experience are really amazing—actually, incredible. There’s, unfortunately, one problem.”

Candidate: “Oh? What…what’s that?”

Interviewer: “I’m afraid that you are über-qualified —specifically, rival-qualified.”

Rival-Qualified

Another “ability discrimination” scenario involves neither being simply rival-qualified nor spy/double-agent-qualified. Ponder the hypothetical case of a young Thomas Edison, who while applying for a job at a candle manufacturer’s plant, tries to impress the project manager with glowing tales of future, yet feasible light bulbs.

The project manager, in addition to whatever fears he has of being replaced by the young versatile and adaptable genius, is also terrified that the entire candle industry will melt away under the heat from Edison’s designs for an incandescent bulb, and with it, his job.

That second, “best-case” scenario is still pretty horrible: Edison’s ideas come to the attention of the boss and the manager is replaced because the product is replaced. That’s a case of both product and personnel rivalry. Call that “rival-qualified2” (mathematically expressed as the product of the product rivalry x personnel rivalry, i.e., rivalry-qualified squared).

“Over-Qualification”: Fears and Motives

In a currently inactive Australia-focused blog, Even It Up!, an article, titled “Ability: A New Form of Job Discrimination?” associates the following employer or recruiter concerns with being conventionally “over-qualified”:

  • the job seeker will walk (and quickly) once they find another position more “suitable” to their qualifications and pay expectations
  • they may expect (and demand) more money once they are in the role
  • they may be more “difficult” to manage and not be as pliable as someone who has less experience/qualifications.

To this, of course, can be added the risk of boredom and lack of challenge motivating the over-qualified employee to quit, or even to be at risk of being fired for indifferent performance. On the applicant, supply side, the article identifies the following as reasons for pursuing or accepting “underemployment”:

  • “me change” mania
  • wanting a better work/life balance
  • slow job market
  • having to come out of retirement
  • wanting portfolio work rather than one full-time job

These observations are correct to the extent that they identify both the employer/recruiter concerns about the “over-qualified” applicant and the latter’s motivation. But notice how they do not capture the concerns, aptitudes and motivations of the “dangerously-qualified” (e.g., double agent-qualified”) or “rival-qualifed2” candidate, e.g., “the job seeker will steal corporate or organizational secrets” or “will make our products, services and skills obsolete”.

“Über-Qualification”: Fears and Motives

Spy/double agent-qualified and rival-qualified2 are just the tip of an über-qualification “ace-berg”—an iceberg of excellence always looming on the hiring horizon, posing a threat to employers, recruiters, employees, suppliers, retailers, etc.,  whose products, services and jobs are jeopardized by the menacing standout skills of the über-qualified.

Having accounted for fear of the über-qualified, what remains is to account for their motives, much as the motives of the “over-qualified” have been explored.

Among the reasons a job seeker might apply for a position for which (s)he is über-qualified are the following, including those previously discussed:

1. to spy

2. to innovate out of existence a company’s obsolete technology, products and/or services

3. to inject the über-qualification into the company’s mix of expertise

4. to sabotage the company

5. to promote personal and/or employer success, even if at the expense of other employees

6. from purely innocent unawareness of (the consequences of) having an über-qualification

7. to offer the company a novel, remarkable, entertaining or status-enhancing skill, credential, etc., which would increase the odds of being hired and of garnering favorable attention or publicity for the company, were it not for the employer/employee panic it will trigger.

So, what should a recruiter do when (not if) an über-qualified applicant comes knocking? Do what Thomas Edison, a hardcore atheist, would never have done.

Light a candle, rather than curse the darkness…

…and pray.

By Michael Moffa