Overqualified or Misjudged? Rethinking Selection Validity in Recruitment

The term ``overqualified'' remains common in recruitment, yet its validity as a pre-entry rejection category is increasingly difficult to defend. Using a critical integrative review of secondary evidence, this article examines whether ``overqualified'' remains a defensible recruitment judgement in contemporary labour markets. The review integrates research on overqualification and underemployment with personnel-selection validity, person–job fit, employer perceptions, skills-based hiring and global evidence on labour-market mismatch. The synthesis shows that overqualification remains useful for diagnosing post-entry mismatch, but the recruitment label is often conceptually loose, weakly predictive, context-sensitive and vulnerable to bias when applied without validated job-related evidence. The article develops an evidence-based recruitment framework for apparent overqualification that replaces the label with five evidence-based questions concerning role requirements, candidate motivation, compensation alignment, capability utilisation and retention risk. Its contribution is not to deny that qualification mismatch occurs, but to show that ``overqualified'' is no longer defensible as an informal recruitment rejection label when used without job-related evidence. The article advances theory by separating mismatch diagnosis from rejection rhetoric and offers practical standards for more transparent, fair and defensible hiring decisions.