There are other mechanisms to handle overflow than the simple minded linked list of overflow entries which e.g. wastes a lot of memory.
Which mechanism to use depends among other things on if you can choose the hash function and possible pick more than one (to implement e.g. double hashing to handle collisions); if you expect to often add items or if the map is static once filled; if you intend to remove items or not; ...
The best way to implement this is to first think about all these parameters and then not code it yourself but to pick a mature existing implementation. Google has a few good implementations -- e.g. http://code.google.com/p/google-sparsehash/
