Job Mismatch and Early Career Success
25 comments
·September 8, 2025CGMthrowaway
>We find that being overqualified for a job causes worse performance evaluations...and these individuals are more likely to be promoted.
Can someone explain this apparent contradiction, specifically in the context of the Air Force/military?
sillygoose14
I think it's stating that overqualified individuals are likely to get worse performance evaluations than if that same individual was in a job they were qualified for (e.g. they try harder when challenged and earn better ratings for themselves on a comparative basis), but are still more likely to get promoted than qualified/underqualified peers.
DaveZale
for sure. sometimes getting stuff done involves stepping on the wrong person's toes, even if it was completely unintended. we've all been there before! a strong boss is required to smooth things out in those situations
colonCapitalDee
I think they mean worse performance evaluations relative to others with similar test scores, but more likely to be promoted compared to other people working the same job
lazide
So cranky, maybe a pain in the ass, but still deliver the bacon?
PaulHoule
Could be the credentials themselves get you marked for promotion.
Monsieur Bouvier was a high school French teacher who was one time the only teacher with a PhD in my school district. He knew a lot about pedagogy and evaluation and certainly French but being his classroom I think he lacked "soft skills" and was not good at dealing with bullshit which is a lot of what the teacher job entails.
He got promoted to assistant principal on the basis of his credentials and put in charge of gifted and talented programs, I think the honors program succeeded precisely because people above him bypassed his authority and overruled him quite often. He was not really a good leader or manager -- as assistant principal he got to do some of what he was good at but he had to do more of dealing with the bullshit that the first and second tier couldn't deal with.
My school had Roy Downton as principal for the longest time and he was really great at the job and hard to replace. There was a lot of jockeying for the position and Bouvier lost out and Mr. Adamankos finally won. I think Boivier's credentials got him a certain advantage in promotion but fortunely he didn't get promoted too far beyond his competence.
boogieknite
im considering the possibility that the performance reviewer is harder on the overqualified candidate for any subjective assessment because expectations are greater or the goal of the lukewarm assessment is to motivate or challenge more capable candidates. an underqualified candidate only has to keep up to pass subjective assessment and the motivation is built-in
many people are immune to basic motivation tactics but im surprised how many of my peers i see influenced by reviews which seem mostly motivational, and occasionally political, to me
andy99
Reminds me of the Gervais framework that someone made (as a kind of parallel to The Office) where you had three groups, confused, losers, psychopaths (don't read too much into the names). Confused work really hard at things they don't get recognized for (Dwight), psychopaths underperform and get promoted (Ryan).
siva7
Not about your specific context, but this contradiction has a name: Dilbert Principle
jimmygrapes
My interpretation based on experience is that the underqualified individuals will often be more prone to volunteering, participation in clubs and committees, and politicking. The overqualified individuals also do this, but will likely be required to do "the real job" more often, leaving a less qualified individual more free to do those things.
Community involvement is a significant factor on both enlisted and officer performance reports. Gotta fill that section in no matter what, and if your section is poor it drags your overall score down.
However, promotion testing is purely knowledge and skill based. A good test taker can overcome the weight of lower performance report scores.
Just my opinion, though.
wood_spirit
It would be really interesting to know to what extent their definitions of being over or under qualified is an approximation of IQ test scores. IQ tests have lovers and loathers but a correlation or otherwise would say they are measuring something or not…
chaps
Total anecdata, but whenever I've had to take an IQ test for an interview process, it's never the IQ test that's used to disqualify me. It's usually something like culture fit.
But these days if a job requires me to do an IQ test to join, I'll use that as a signal to get the fuck out of there and find a different role. So again, anecdata, but I suspect I'm not the only one who would eschew those results.
spydum
I have never heard of IQ tests for hiring, is this for real? I've seen Myers-Briggs and similar personality sorting hats, but never IQ.
golly_ned
Amazon did this, at least for a time, as part of a "No See, No Hear" hiring pilot program.
The purpose was to see if they could hire university graduates with a minimum of human interviewing effort. They selected from a handful of universities, gave a couple online tests, verified the candidate's identity as the test-taker, then would give out offers sight-unseen.
I was hired this way in 2015. From my perspective, I had taken a couple online tests, then months later had a thirty-minute identity verification call, then a couple months later, was sent a job offer. I thought it was by mistake, so I didn't ask too many questions. I had a thirty-minute call with a hiring manager I otherwise never interacted with, then accepted, flew internationally back to the states to Seattle to start, met him and all my teammates for the first time on my first day of work.
I found the internal documents about this program later on spelunking in the internal wiki.
mkipper
I applied for a management-consulting-ish job a decade ago (I was desperate!) at a big firm and had to take what was basically an IQ test. I have no idea if the test literally calculated my IQ, but the questions were exactly the questions you'd see in an IQ test (e.g. next item in some geometric sequence) so it may as well have.
This was in a group interview for recent university graduates at a very big company. I assume their hiring process was pretty standardized, so there were probably thousands of people taking this test every year in North America.
whstl
It used to be VERY popular in enterprise, where HR professionals often coming from psychology handle most of the hiring.
I have no idea why they did this, I guess that was the idea of a hiring process at the time.
ecshafer
Military takes the ASVAB which is basically the SAT / IQ Test which qualifies you were certain jobs. For example Nukes in the Navy (which is considered one of the hardest programs for obvious reasons) is 252 score for some combination of scores.
nativeit
My understanding is that IQ tests can measure a type of intelligence, but fixation on its narrow metrics can lead one to overlook other attributes that are just as likely to be relevant, but aren’t something that necessarily shows up in standardized tests. Add to that the fact that IQ tests can be heavily biased, and leave a lot of ambiguity for the proctors to interpret, it’s not a surprise that they’re so controversial.
I personally would be very suspicious if asked to sit for an IQ test as part of a job evaluation. I have worked for places that blindly worship context-free performance metrics, and it was insufferable.
nonameiguess
It's exactly what it is. When someone enlists in the US military, they take what is called the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). It's more specific to the military than Stanford-Binet, but effectively it is still an IQ test. Specific military occupational specialties have minimum score requirements to qualify for that job. Which job you actually end up getting is a combination of scoring high enough to qualify, scoring higher than everyone else who wants the same job, doing well on other things they assess you on, and needs of the branch of service at the time you enlist. Score high enough for cyber but they only need mechanics, then you're becoming a mechanic. Conversely, if they badly need cyber professionals but nobody scores high enough to meet the official bar, they're still putting people into that job. Hence, why the mismatch exists in the first place and why there's a study like this.
zabzonk
Perhaps measuring how well people perform on IQ tests?
Moosdijk
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34215/w342... this is the direct link to the paper.
DaveZale
Well I worked as a civilian in that branch a decade ago. Purely technical work, and I got the assigned tasks done in about 7 months.
You also have to look at the culture of the place- and although that varies from base to base, whether or not someone is more or less qualified may be completely irrelevant. Cultural fit is very important, for example. Favoritism may be rampant, just like any other workplace. High performers who concentrate solely on the relevant tasks have less time to make the rounds around the office, playing petty politics, just like anywhere.
curtisszmania
[dead]
> patterns suggest that overqualified individuals are less motivated, but still outperform others in their same job. Underqualification results in a polar opposite set of findings, suggesting these individuals are motivated to put forth more effort, but still struggle to compete when judged relative to others.
So... the system works?
At least within the very constrained universe of what the Air Force is doing/testing for?