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With the unemployment rate at 9.7 percent (at least until Friday), and 12 million or so Americans out of work, there are still a lot of things related to the economy worth fretting about. Hiring, however, is not one of them; as this New York Times article makes clear, there&#39;s never been a better time to get talented, experienced workers through the door&amp;mdash;with many businesses reaping the benefits of hiring people who are plainly overqualified for the positions they&#39;re applying for. The question, however, is whether that&#39;s something you&#39;d want to do.&lt;p&gt;On the face of it, there are plenty of very good reasons why you&#39;d want to hire someone who was taking a step down in terms of their career: they&#39;re much more likely to be able to do the job you&#39;re hiring them for well, while in many cases also contributing extra just to stay interested. And, overqualified or not, they&#39;re just as likely to be grateful to land whatever they can as anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the Times piece makes abundantly clear, there are also plenty of reasons why you wouldn&#39;t want to hire from the &quot;overqualified&quot; pool&amp;mdash;the number one reason being that you&#39;re much more likely to experience turnover as soon as that person finds something that&#39;s more in line with their experience levels and salary expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, the final sentence of the Times article sums up the greatest problem employers will have with hiring overqualified workers: the employee they profiled &quot;wonder how long simply having a job will be enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you take all that into account and decide that you&#39;re going to take your chances on someone who&#39;s overqualified, here are a couple of ideas to bear in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Hire with an eye on the future&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;Sure, unemployment might be high right now, and not projected to dip significantly for several years, but that alone isn&#39;t going to keep top talent in positions that just aren&#39;t enough for them. If you&amp;rsquo;re going to take the risk of giving a job to someone who&#39;s overqualified for it, try to identify areas where their skills might be of use in months and years to come, even if they&#39;re not crucial to the role you&#39;re currently hiring for. That&#39;s especially true if you&#39;re thinking of expanding, or if you know you&#39;ll have other employees leaving in the short to medium term.&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Find ways to keep them engaged&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;If &quot;simply having a job&quot; isn&#39;t likely to be enough for a candidate, find out what would be closer to &quot;enough&quot; for them: maybe they&#39;d be interested in leading professional development initiatives based on their past experience. Or maybe they&#39;re more the mentoring types, and would be willing to take on a younger or less experienced colleague. Additionally, highly accomplished careerists have usually mastered the ability of multi-tasking, and may be able to pitch in in entirely unrelated areas of the business, and develop new skills and experiences of their own into the bargain.&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Accept that they&#39;re going to leave&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br&gt;Some things in life aren&#39;t meant to last.  If you can bring in someone with an abundance of talent and experience to give your company a temporary lift&amp;mdash;and possibly raise the game of everyone around them into the bargain&amp;mdash;then it may well be worth doing even though you know it&#39;ll only be until something better comes along. While hiring  can be a drawn-out, expensive affair, companies in this environment won&#39;t struggle to find people either at or seeking to step up to the level of hire you&#39;re looking for. So why not take a chance on hiring someone above that level and find out what someone in the position could be capable of. There&#39;ll still be plenty of &quot;good enough&quot; candidates to fall back on when it&#39;s absolutely necessary.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;--Posted by Phil Stott, Vault.com&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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