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You Don’t Need to Meet Every Qualification to Apply for a Job

Written by Bernie

Bernie Frazier, SPHR is the Founder and President of CAREERCompass, LLC, a speaking and career coaching firm in St. Louis, MO. She also spent almost 25 years recruiting talent to six organizations across four industries and led the talent acquisition function for four of those organizations, including one global team.

By now, I’m sure most of you have heard about the Hewlett Packard internal report which stated that men apply for jobs when they only meet 60% of the qualifications, while women won’t apply until they meet 100% of them. Most assumptions have been because more women lack confidence in themselves and/or their abilities than men, but an additional study may have proven that this isn’t not necessarily true for most female workers.

I won’t go into the details (you can read more for yourself here==>Harvard study), because what I want to focus on are the women who indeed don’t apply for jobs because they don’t believe they possess all of the needed qualifications.

As someone who has spent over 25 years of my professional career recruiting talent for multiple companies across multiple industries, let me just say, “YOU DON’T NEED TO MEET 100% OF THE LISTED QUALIFICATIONS TO BE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED FOR A JOB.”

I’ll type this again for the people in the back – “YOU DON’T NEED TO MEET 100% OF THE LISTED QUALIFICATIONS TO BE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED FOR A JOB.”

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule but, for the most part, when an employer posts an open position, they always list:

  • Job Title
  • Job ID (job number so candidates can be associated with the correct position)
  • Location
  • Salary Range (a new requirement in some states)
  • High-level overview of the role
  • Duties/Responsibilities
  • Qualifications
  • Company Information
  • EOE statement
  • Other

When listing the Qualifications, you will see anywhere from five to 15 bulleted requirements. Oftentimes, the longer the list, the less of a priority the latter qualifications are. This often means the most important qualifications an employer really wants/needs in a candidate are the top 50 percent. These are what I call the “need to haves.” The remaining qualifications are usually the “nice to haves.”

“Need to haves” often involved years of experience, education, and technical or hard skills such as software knowledge, management experience (people, budget, vendor, etc.), analysis, etc. “Nice to haves” are often your softer skills such as initiative, good communication, etc.

This means, if you have 80-100 percent of the “need to haves,” many employers will want to connect with you. It’s funny because I’ve often thought this was backwards. Many times, you can train someone for the technical or hard skills. It’s the soft skills that are usually more difficult. How do you train someone to be a go-getter if they’re not?

Nevertheless, when considering submitting your application and resume for a position, remember if you have at least 80 percent of the top half of the required skills, go for it!

The worst thing that can happen is nothing.

The best thing – you get a call.

Until next time….