{"id":284,"date":"2023-11-29T06:47:58","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T06:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/?p=284"},"modified":"2024-11-26T09:34:26","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T09:34:26","slug":"a-myth-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/news-insights\/a-myth-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified\/","title":{"rendered":"A Myth? Women Don\u2019t Apply for Jobs Unless They\u2019re 100% Qualified"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Myth? Women Don\u2019t Apply for Jobs Unless They\u2019re 100% Qualified<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p><em>By Rachel Hill<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-post-date\"><time datetime=\"2023-11-29T06:47:58+00:00\">November 29, 2023<\/time><\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You\u2019ve 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 the requirements.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, I often quote this piece of evidence when talking about unconscious bias in our <a href=\"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/our-services\/training\/\">recruitment skills training<\/a> session for leaders. When looking at self-bias affecting applications received from women. This could be affecting your recruitment pipeline and diversity mix which are crucial factors in your overall <a href=\"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\">recruitment strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Do Women Need More Confidence?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s usually invoked as evidence that women need more confidence.&nbsp;As one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/womensmedia\/2014\/04\/28\/act-now-to-shrink-the-confidence-gap\/?sh=52dceb7c5c41\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Forbes article<\/a>&nbsp;put it, \u201c<em>Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don<\/em><em>\u2019<\/em><em>t feel confident until they<\/em><em>\u2019<\/em><em>ve checked off each item on the list.<\/em>\u201d The general advice: women need to have more faith in themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Original Research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This all comes from an original piece of research based on a Hewitt Packard internal report and has been quoted in&nbsp;books such as Lean In,&nbsp;The Confidence Code&nbsp;and dozens of articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, as <strong>Tara Sophia Mohr <\/strong>explains and has gone one step further to investigate this with some research results posted in her <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2014\/08\/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Harvard Business Review article<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">So Is this Myth About Women Applicants True?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, it turns out in her HBR piece based on research with over 1000 women and men in their application practices. The main reasons for not applying are actually a little different:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Didn\u2019t think they would hire me as didn\u2019t have the qualifications and didn\u2019t want to waste their time<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Being respectful of the other person\u2019s time reviewing the applications<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Didn\u2019t want to put myself out there in case I failed<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Was following the process as outlined<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Both men and women list the above four reasons, although higher for Women on points 3 and 4 above. Interestingly a key driver for not applying is wasting people\u2019s time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Insights<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The main two insights I gather here, especially in the current candidate-tight marketplace are that: <strong>a)<\/strong> both men and women need to \u201c<em>have a go<\/em>\u201d more and apply, for roles even if not 100% match to role requirements. And <strong>b)<\/strong> it could be Recruitment guidelines e.g., that applicants <strong>MUST<\/strong> meet all criteria wording and phrasing, that is actually putting more women off from applying than men. Women are taught to follow the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Tara\u2019s synopsis \u201c<em>What held them back from applying was not a mistaken perception about themselves, but a mistaken perception about the hiring process<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Further Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>So, my questions are: Are unconscious bias and poor practices impacting your recruitment process and pipeline? And does anyone else have examples of where and why they think women don\u2019t apply for particular positions? I\u2019d love to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-white-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/contact-us\/\" style=\"background-color:#56a0d3\">Book A Free Consultation<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Myth? Women Don\u2019t Apply for Jobs Unless They\u2019re 100% Qualified By Rachel Hill You\u2019ve 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 the requirements. Indeed, I often quote this piece of evidence when talking about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-insights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillconsultinghrs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}