Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified

[eridani]

https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified/?utm_campaign=HBR&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

You’ve probably heard the following statistic: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.

The finding comes from a Hewlett Packard internal report, and has been quoted in Lean In, The Confidence Code and dozens of articles. It’s usually invoked as evidence that women need more confidence. As one Forbes article put it, “Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list.” The advice: women need to have more faith in themselves.

I was skeptical, because the times I had decided not to apply for a job because I didn’t meet all the qualifications, faith myself wasn’t exactly the issue. I suspected I wasn’t alone.

So I surveyed over a thousand men and women, predominantly American professionals, and asked them, “If you decided not to apply for a job because you didn’t meet all the qualifications, why didn’t you apply?”

According to the self-report of the respondents, the barrier to applying was not lack of confidence. In fact, for both men and women, “I didn’t think I could do the job well” was the least common of all the responses. Only about 10% of women and 12% of men indicated that this was their top reason for not applying.

[SusanCalvin]

1. Everyone should go read the whole article!

As a female with over four decades in the workforce, and having been the first female of my position in most places I worked, I feel qualified to say that this hits the nail on the €™¥©ing head.

Thank you for posting.

[laundry_queen]

2. The rest of the article describes my current workplace pretty well

and it's maddening.

The last time I applied for a job without having every.single.qualification I was thoroughly shamed by the HR team doing the hiring - hey, at least I got the interview, although I suspect they only wanted to interview me so they could have some fun shaming me - it was without a doubt the rudest interviewing team I've ever seen. They 'shushed' me several times. I was told I was not allowed to tell them any extraneous information about myself, that they would ask the questions and I would stick strictly to the topic TYVM or they would cut me off. And boy did they. I was definitely not allowed to sell myself, LOL. It's made me a bit leery of doing that again. It wasn't like I was WAY under qualified either. They weren't looking for a degree...I had one. They wanted 2 years experience in one area, and I had 1 year experience in a related area (acted as a support for the area they wanted). Sheesh.

[SusanCalvin]

3. Oho!

I'd be willing to bet they wanted you in order to say they'd interviewed a female. Had the same experience, although they were not as rude.

[laundry_queen]

4. Well it was weird.

They were all female as well. Or I would have thought it was something like that. But to this day it was the strangest interview I've ever had. The face to face interview was only the first part...

They put me in a room to test my computer skills and left me there. They gave me NO instructions, LOL. I was told they would be right outside if I needed help, so I went outside to ask where the papers I was told were on the desk were...EVERYONE had completely abandoned the entire floor. WTF?? So I returned to the office, LOL, and searched the files. Then something caught my eye and I 'found' some papers on the floor under the printer stand that happened to be the instructions, and parts of the instructions were missing on the paper... but I figured them out and handed them in, as well as the memory stick where I saved all my work. Never heard anything back after that. So weird. I think it was one of those jobs where they probably already had someone in mind but HAD to interview people and I felt distinctly like they were trying to sabotage me so they could justify their preferred hire. Weirdest.interview.ever.