What makes women different to men….
Ok so I won’t actually attempt to answer that question but what I will try to answer is “what makes women different to men when it comes to applying for jobs”? What I have seen in my experience of working as a Career Coach and within the recruitment industry is that some women will not apply for a position unless they fit at least 90% – 100% of the requirements set out in the job advertisement/ job specification. In contrast men will often apply to a position if they fit 60% of the requirements for the role! This is of course a generalisation but these figures are also backed up by findings published in the Harvard Business Review. Of course each human being is unique in terms of their way of thinking and their motivation so there could be any number of reasons why women are more selective when it comes to assessing their suitability for a role. Some of these reasons could be:
· I don’t want to waste my time applying for this role when I’m missing one or two of the key skills that this employer is looking for.
· There must be candidates out there who meet more of the role requirements so why would I apply when I am missing some of these.
· I don’t want to waste the time of the person reviewing the applications for this role.
· As I am missing one or more of the key skills I’m not even sure if I could do this role competently.
All of the above of course may be valid reasons but it is worthwhile for both women and men to consider the following – many job adverts and job specs out there are aspirational job specs. An aspirational job specification includes a mix of requirements that are a “must have” and requirements that are a “nice to have”. A job spec may list up to 10 requirements but only 3-4 of these may turn out to be “must have” or mandatory skills and the remaining requirements are simply part of a wish list. Some employers may use an old job spec that has not been re-visited in quite a while and they may not have given much thought to how candidates will interpret the experience and skills requirements. A good example of this is whereby an employer might list a degree education as part of the job requirements as standard but in reality they may be very open to candidates who don’t have a degree but have equivalent years of experience in a similar role/ industry.
So yes it seems that women and men have different tendencies when it comes to applying for positions but I would encourage both men and women to consider the aspirational job spec phenomenon and think about what they do have to offer in terms of experience, tangible skills and natural strengths and give it a shot!
#InternationalWomensDay #IWD #IWD2019 #BalanceforBetter #careersuccess
Author: Lorraine Shine Career & Interview Coach: www.careerandinterviewsuccess.ie