The word ‘overqualification’ is often used as a euphemism when companies do not want to reveal the reasons for not hiring an applicant. It can mask age discrimination or the demand for a higher salary than anticipated.
‘Overqualification’ is the condition of a person having more qualifications than are necessary for the performance of a job.
Frequently, this is the reason that companies allege when rejecting a candidate when they understand that he is applying for the position because at that moment he does not have anything better, running the risk that he will leave as soon as he finds it, or to remain in the position dissatisfied and unmotivated.
Spain leads the top of overqualification in most sectors -transport, storage, commerce, industry- since more than half of the students with a higher degree end up accepting positions that do not require any degree.
We are the European country with the highest overqualification: one in three people seeking employment
One in three employed people has training that exceeds the needs of their job, specifically 37.7%, according to the latest 2019 report from the European Commission on the evolution of the labor market and wages. This overqualification is greater among women, where the percentage reaches 41%, than among men.
By region, according to Asempleo (employment agency employers), Madrid presents the best fit between training and employment and the Canary Islands the greatest mismatch. The communities with the lowest unemployment rates are those with the highest rates of overqualification: País Vasco (59.4%), Cantabria (58%) and La Rioja, where the overqualified represent 56.4% of the total number of employed persons.
Companies often use the term to reject older candidates, also addressing a series of myths and false beliefs that further hinder the employability of seniors over 50 years of age: they will be overqualified and will demand better working and economic conditions; he will be technologically less prepared than the young man; he will be less flexible to work overtime or travel.
While in our country it is common practice and one could almost say that it is “socially accepted”, in the United States the courts have already ruled that it is illegal and punishable to use the term “overqualified” as a politically correct euphemism for the expression “too old”.
According to Gloria Juste, director of projects at the Endesa Foundation, “Within Savia we have a network of more than 20,000 seniors who have a long professional career, occupying managerial positions and who have acquired a series of ‘soft skills’ that you can only learn thanks to to experience, and that precisely because of their age, they are being rejected by the job market despite their great value to companies”.
Generación Savia provides solutions to the optimization of the talent of workers over 50 years of age, from two dimensions: the need for senior professionals to continue working and the need that exists in the business world and, especially, in companies, SMEs, startups and NGOs to capture this talent.
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