Decoding Job Descriptions: Applying Strategically and Reading Between the Lines

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Transcript:

(AI Generated)

What you need to understand is when people write job descriptions is, first of all, they maybe do not have the training. Or capability to write a job description, like the person who wrote the job description is a human being and they, you don't know, like maybe they're not even that familiar with the role.

They were tasked to do this by the department head. Maybe they're just some intern in the HR department. Right. The second thing is, Sometimes people write job descriptions, like they are creating this roadmap for what their dream house is gonna look like, but they only have 50 cents in the bank account.

Have you seen those reality shows where people are like, yes. I'm like, a part-time school teacher and I'm, I have my eye on this $5 million mansion in Beverly Hills. It's that they're trying to get the most out of the limited budget they have, and it might be totally unrealistic.

So when you're looking at a job description, if you're finding yourself nodding along to at least 50%, you should probably apply if the rest seems interesting to you. And statistically speaking, women do this a lot where they are like, I have to check off like a hundred percent of the job before I apply.

Whereas men don't do that and your job is not to figure out the quality of candidates like you. Your job is just to apply. They are gonna let you know if you're not a good fit. So you should apply anyway. And you should also learn to read between the lines. So if they have this job description where they're expecting you to be 25 with 30 years of experience and 20 years of management experience.

What does that mean actually? So 20 years of management experience means you have the ability to set that executive level vision that you have experience trickling that vision throughout your organization, if they're asking for lots of years of experience, they're asking for

mastery of specific things in the field. And maybe you have all that, you just don't have the years. Maybe you've done stuff in school or maybe you've done stuff when volunteering and maybe you are so successful at that doesn't take you years and years for you to be able to exhibit that kind of skillset.

So talk about that. Read between the lines. Don't just look at the number of years and figure out exactly what does this organization need and how does my story match up to that.