5. Conclusion
Overqualification in the workplace is a phenomenon that has been around since the beginning of organizations. Unfortunately, very little action has been taken to recognize this as a possible problem, and propose remedial suggestions for how to address it. Our proposed framework suggests that overqualified employees can be valuable human resources if organizations provide the proper developmental career experiences for them to make unique contributions. We argue that the overqualified (i.e., particularly those who are overqualified because of past work experience) have knowledge, skills, and abilities that, if career development experiences are made available to these employees, can be leveraged to aid the organization. Such career enhancing activities include allowing them to job craft by expanding their job duties and responsibilities to incorporate mentoring others and serving as informal leaders in ways that contribute meaningfully to the organization, and render them as valuable human resources. We suggest that such activities not only render overqualified employees as more valuable assets to organizations, but these career development experiences positively affect these employees' satisfaction and organizational commitment, which likely decreases the turnover that can impact these employees. We hope this conceptual framework stimulates more research attention to this important topic, helps to inform career development considerations for special groups of employees like the overqualified, and demonstrates how the current status of the overqualified in organizations as a vastly underutilized and underappreciated resource does not have to remain that way.
