Do I Need to be a 100% Match for the Job?

You’ve probably seen all too many job postings that are a mishmash of buzzwords and countless skill requirements. Assuming these are not NonJobs™, should you apply if you don’t meet all the qualifications?

In reality we hiring managers ask for the perfect candidate but know we’ll never get such a person. For instance, while I might ask for someone with experience in C#, ASP.NET, .NET CLR, XHTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, AJAX, WCF, and SQL Server, I fully realize that no one (or very few) will be strong in all those areas.

What I’m looking for then is a few core skills that are key to the job (e.g., ASP.NET, HTML, & CSS). If the candidate is strong in those areas and has at least a passing awareness of the other technologies, that may be sufficient for a hire. So the lesson here is that if you feel that you are not a 100% match in terms of skill set but do possess the core skills, you should definitely go ahead and apply for the job.

But that begs the question, what exactly are the “core skills” for each job? Well, sometimes the job description itself breaks out the ‘Core’ vs. “Nice to have” skills, but other times the skills are all jumbled together into an alphabet soup. But you can usually read through the lines and glean some information from the rest of the job description. Are they looking for a UI guru? A scalability expert? Someone who can optimize data access? Or an all-around utility infielder? That should clue you in on what skills are essential for the job.