Should you apply for a job if you don't meet 100% of the qualifications?
Do people apply for jobs even if theydon’t meet all of the qualifications listed on a job advertisement?
There’sbeen sizable reporting over the past decade — some based on a Hewlett-Packardinternal report cited in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Willto Lead — that suggests men are likely to apply to a job if they meetjust some of the listed job requirements, while women are only like to apply ifthey meet 100%.
TaraSophia Mohr suggested in an August 2014 Harvard Business Review article that agreater reason women don’t apply for jobs where they don’t meet all thequalifications is not chiefly from a lack of confidence, but more from notwanting to waste their time applying if the hiring company was likely to ruletheir application out.
Thereremains an unevenness in who will apply to a job posting based on theassumptions about the listed qualifications. Too often, someone who might havedone a great job but hesitated to apply learns of someone else getting the jobwho seemed to have far fewer of the listed qualifications than she did.
Perhapsthis is more common that I believe it to be, but when I happened upon a job description for a Deputy Style and Standards Editor at Vox Media recently, itstruck me that the company made a strong effort to make it clear to prospectiveemployees that they should apply even if they didn’t meet every listedqualification. (Full disclosure: I came upon the Vox ad because a formergraduate student who would be this person’s boss posted it on her LinkedInfeed.)
“Ifyou think you have what it takes,” the Vox ad read in the “Who You Are”section, “but don't meet every single point in our job posting, please applywith a cover letter to let us know how you believe you can bring your uniqueskills to the Vox Media team or get in touch!” The ad went on to point out thatVox has hired “chefs who became editors, DJs who became UX designers, andsommeliers who became writers.”
Itmay seem a small thing, and more companies than Vox may be running such “applyanyway” type codicils on their job ads, but it strikes me as a good thing forcompanies to try to be more transparent with prospective applicants who don’tmeet all of the qualifications but who make a compelling hire nonetheless.
Theend result could be to encourage more people to apply who might have ruledthemselves out of a job before they were even considered. It also might resultin companies ending up hiring strong people who might never have applied.
Makingit clear that an employer will consider people and all they have to bring to ajob — even if some of that “all that” is not listed in the job ad —could alsoresult in companies ending up with someone about whom they might never haveknown. If companies truly mean they will consider applicants who don’t meet100% of the listed qualifications, then clarity about that willingness on theirjob ads is the right thing to do.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin
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