Building “Well-known Trademark”: The Effect of Perceived Overqualification on Career Success

Overqualification has become a prominent phenomenon in modern society. Despite the growing research on the effects of individual perception of overqualification, the linkage between perceived overqualification and career outcome has been largely overlooked. In this study, we draw from the competency-based view of careers to clarify how, why, and when employees who feel overqualified can achieve favorable career outcomes. To be specific, we predict that employees having a perception of overqualification tend to emphasize the value of their personal brand (i.e., they have greater personal brand equity), which contributes to their career success (i.e., career ambition, career role performance, and promotability). Across one experiment (N = 389) and one multi-wave and multisource field study (N = 220), we found evidence that perceived overqualification is positively related to personal brand equity, and perceived overqualification has a positive indirect effect on career ambition, career role performance, and promotability through the mediating effect of personal brand equity. In addition, our results reveal that the self-promotion motive plays a key moderating role in strengthening the positive relationship between perceived overqualification and personal brand equity. Our study makes several important contributions to the literature on perceived overqualification and career as well as to practice.