Should you apply for a job if you don't meet 100% of the qualifications?

Do people apply for jobs even if they don’t meet all of the qualifications listed on a job advertisement?

There’s been sizable reporting over the past decade — some based on a Hewlett-Packard internal report cited in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead — that suggests men are likely to apply to a job if they meet just some of the listed job requirements, while women are only like to apply if they meet 100%.

Tara Sophia Mohr suggested in an August 2014 Harvard Business Review article that a greater reason women don’t apply for jobs where they don’t meet all the qualifications is not chiefly from a lack of confidence, but more from not wanting to waste their time applying if the hiring company was likely to rule their application out.

There remains an unevenness in who will apply to a job posting based on the assumptions about the listed qualifications. Too often, someone who might have done a great job but hesitated to apply learns of someone else getting the job who seemed to have far fewer of the listed qualifications than she did.

Perhaps this 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, it struck me that the company made a strong effort to make it clear to prospective employees that they should apply even if they didn’t meet every listed qualification. (Full disclosure: I came upon the Vox ad because a former graduate student who would be this person’s boss posted it on her LinkedIn feed.)

“If you 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 apply with a cover letter to let us know how you believe you can bring your unique skills to the Vox Media team or get in touch!” The ad went on to point out that Vox has hired “chefs who became editors, DJs who became UX designers, and sommeliers who became writers.”

It may seem a small thing, and more companies than Vox may be running such “apply anyway” type codicils on their job ads, but it strikes me as a good thing for companies to try to be more transparent with prospective applicants who don’t meet all of the qualifications but who make a compelling hire nonetheless.

The end result could be to encourage more people to apply who might have ruled themselves out of a job before they were even considered. It also might result in companies ending up hiring strong people who might never have applied.

Making it clear that an employer will consider people and all they have to bring to a job — even if some of that “all that” is not listed in the job ad —could also result in companies ending up with someone about whom they might never have known. If companies truly mean they will consider applicants who don’t meet 100% of the listed qualifications, then clarity about that willingness on their job 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

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

The admissions essay you write should be your own

My social media feeds have been all atwitter for some time about how the artificial intelligence (AI) bot ChatGPT could affect college admissions essays. Concern abounds that applicants will begin to use ChatGPT to generate admission essays that respond to college application prompts.

In a column for Inside Higher Education, Jim Jump, a seasoned counselor to high school seniors applying to college, recounted his experience being asked by Forbes magazine to weigh in on an essay generated by ChatGPT and definitively determine whether or not it was written by a person.

“I probably couldn’t detect the AI authorship,” Jump wrote, but he pointed out that he “wouldn’t label the essays as convincing.” They were cliched and did not respond to the prompt convincingly. “They also didn’t sound like an essay a teenager would write, but rather an essay a teenager might write with major assistance and editing by an adult.”

Shortly after I read Jump’s column, I saw a post on LinkedIn that mentioned embracing AI is crucial for aspiring students and job seekers. The poster pointed out how ChatGPT could write your admission essay for you, adding that high-priced admissions consultants who are hired to assist students with all aspects of their college admission process, including the essay, “are going to face tough days soon.”

Why is there so much fuss about prospective students using ChatGPT or similar AI tools to write their essays for them when many students with means have hired admissions consultants to “assist” them with their college application essays for years?

It is likely no easier to detect whether an admissions consultant wrote an essay for a student than it would be to determine whether ChatGPT did. In fact, as the technology evolves, it might become easier to detect ChatGPT’s work than the work of a seasoned admissions counselor.

An ethical admissions counselor, of course, should never write an application essay for a client. But if an application instructs applicants that they should not have someone else write or edit their essay for them, the line between “edit” and “coach” might be blurry. (Summon the angry letters from seasoned admissions consultants.)

If coaching involves giving a prospective student general advice, that seems fair. Such advice might be to make sure to actually answer the prompt, to make sure they try to include personal examples that could only come from them, to proofread their work. You know, basic stuff any high school senior should have learned in school but may not have taken to heart at the time.

The real question college admissions committees should be asking is whether they are explicit in their instructions that an applicant’s work should be their own. Having them sign a statement that indicates they did not rely on AI bots nor any one person to write, rewrite or heavily edit their work doesn’t guarantee they won’t, but it becomes a first test of a prospective student’s integrity. If they know that violating their agreement risks losing admission, that might give them pause. But the real reason students should do their own work is because it might give the admissions committee a sense of the person behind the essay … and because it’s 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

Should we question someone's motive for working for a cause?

Should those who become advocates for a cause be criticized if they only embraced the cause because of a child or loved one?

A reader wants to know whether a friend’s newfound dedication to working for and getting others interested in working for the rights of children with a particular disability should be taken any less seriously because the friend never expressed any interest in that disability before discovering her child was among those who had it. “Wouldn’t her passion be more convincing if there weren't a clear self-interest involved?”

It's not unusual to read stories of people becoming active for a particular cause after they discover they have a personal experience with that cause. Sometimes these stories don’t involve disabilities. And sometimes the discovery results in someone doing a complete reversal in their views. There are plenty of stories of legislators who are adamant in their lack of support for same-sex marriage, for example, until they discover one of their adult children identifies as LGBTQ+ and in a loving relationship.

With support for those with a particular disability, it’s less often the case that someone is against supporting work for those with that disability. It’s far more common that the disability never crossed their mind until it affected them personally.

Does this mean we should discount their activity because they only became involved after discovering that a child or loved one could be among those helped by their work? No.

My brother-in-law lived with muscular dystrophy. Marrying into his family raised my awareness, but I was no less compassionate or caring than others who care about people with muscular dystrophy. I may not have lived with muscular dystrophy top of mind until I became a part of his life, but my concern about him and others with muscular dystrophy was no less valid even though my awareness wasn’t raised until I met and ultimately married into his family.

Similarly, if someone has a child with a medical condition that doesn’t get the type of attention or support that would be useful to improve that and other children’s life, the passion a parent has to work for more research or treatment to help those with the condition — including her child — should in no way be discounted. Working toward helping others who could benefit from the support is a good thing, regardless of how we arrive at the desire to do so.

There are plenty of causes to go around, and often, too few people to support them. If we start questioning the motivation of every person who wants to do something to help someone else, the best we can hope for is a free-floating cynicism. At worse, such attitudes can serve to disincentive people from helping when they can.

When someone discovers a cause about which they care deeply, regardless of how they arrived at that decision, the right thing is to let them. If it seems a cause we might want to help with as well, then we should have at it.

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

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.