MY WORDS TO YOUFrom Markey's Heart
You Are More than Qualified
In both business and life in general, many of us drink our share of toxic lemonade. We are fed a lot of baloney that simply isn’t true, and we start to believe it. Take applying for a job, for instance. We tell ourselves that unless we have all of the qualifications the employer is looking for, there is no way we would land that job.
Many of these job opening descriptions are misleading. Any HR person will tell you that the person who ends up getting the job may have only 30-40% of the requirements listed on the job advertisement. The reality is that hiring managers may put down all of these crazy requirements for the position, only find reality hitting them in the face after the first few interviews.
Life Skills
What they come away with is not how many years of experience you have with a certain software program, or how well you do with Excel spreadsheets, but more important aspects of human nature such as “Can you think for yourself?” or “Can you solve problems?”
Such questions are not only good job qualifications, they are also good life skills. You can indeed apply for positions you don’t necessarily feel qualified for. If the job sounds interesting to you and you feel you’d be a good candidate, go for it! Highlight your personal assets on your resume. If a hiring manager is worth their weight, they will recognize your strengths, your passions, how that relates to the job in question, and they may at least call you in for an interview.
Find the Pain
Getting a job is as much about good rapport as anything else. Being a reliable worker, a team player, someone who brings teams together; anyone can possess those skills, regardless of your technical experience. You simply have to change your mindset walking into the interview. When you read the job posting, try to recognize the pain behind the posting. What does this company really need with respect to this position, beyond the technical mumbo-jumbo? Strive to read between the lines, find out what they really need, and you will ace the interview.
You are immensely more qualified than you think! Take the white-collar worker. If you’ve worked one white-collar job, you’ve worked them all, regardless of the industry. What matters is the ability and a willingness to learn a new skill, and any normal person with a few common sense notches under their belt can do it.
Learning a new industry simply means learning new processes and new terminology. You have the power to choose your next job, your next career path. Don’t ever limit yourself by your own doubt or hesitation that you can’t do something that interests you.
Show that hiring manager that you have the skills and ability to ease the pain behind that open position. Show them how you’ve already spent time solving the same sort of Business Pain they are experiencing.
You are more qualified than you think. Go for what you want.