Are you hesitating to apply for a job because you don't meet all the qualifications?
This episode focuses on a strategic approach to finding a job in a competitive market and why you might need to only meet 50% of the qualifications.
We will discuss:
- Transferable skills and how they… transfer
- How to prioritize networking over “blanket” applications
- Ways to tailor your resume to each job application, and get past the screeners
Ultimately, job descriptions often include a list of ideal qualifications, not all of which are essential. By focusing on your core strengths and taking a strategic approach to your job search, you can significantly increase your chances of landing a great position.
In this Episode:
[3:26] Numbers? Zodiac? Lottery? – let’s breakdown the current job market
[08:13] Demonstrating the ability to learn is key
[11:00] It might be more about vibes than specifics
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 hours of CME, learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, special connections, prior experience, or a pay cut
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 134 – When to Apply When You're Underqualified for a Job
Hey there. Welcome back. Today, we're going to talk about whether you should apply for a job if you do not meet all the qualifications. Here it is 2025 I have talked about this topic in the past on the podcast and otherwise, but lately, the conversations that I'm having with people are just a little bit different, right? The job market is a little bit different.
So I am addressing this again today from, you know, sort of a modern or current world view on, you know, what is going on in the job market, in the industry, what has changed and what has not changed in terms of whether you should apply for a job if you don't meet all of the qualifications.
So first and foremost, you know, my historical advice on this and probably many people's, as you've heard, is that you do not need to have all of the qualifications in order to successfully apply for a job. Generally speaking, you should look at the job description that you might see on the company website or LinkedIn or glass door, wherever it is, as sort of a wish list, and they are describing, in many cases, you know, a unicorn candidate that they are well aware does not exist, perhaps, and that just some of those is enough, right? That not every single thing is necessary, but that some of those things are necessary. What can be tricky is sometimes there's a couple of things on that long list that are extremely important for that particular job to that particular hiring manager, and the rest are less important, but they usually don't give that away, really in the job description.
So it's important thing to keep in mind, it's one of the reasons why you should go ahead and apply for many jobs, because a lot of times the things that they want the most are really not all of those technical skills. And they know you can learn that on the job. But it is not impossible. In fact, it is common, right? That for a specific job, there is a specific set of skills or experiences or something that they are trying to fill and in that case, which you know you probably will never know that, or you if you get to the interview stage, they might share that with you, but you may never know that, and that could be the reason that you don't get the job. And so don't let it discourage you.
This is one of those things that you cannot always tell from the job description, but generally speaking, right? They definitely do not expect you to have everything on the job description if you've been thinking about a career move into pharma or biotech, remember to check out my course Industry Insider from your resume and job search to interviews offers and compensation negotiations. It's a complete guide to getting your foot in the door and finally landing the job you want. So stop putting it off. The link is in the show notes. I hope to see you there.
All right, so to answer this question, you've got to understand the job description is, in many ways, especially for an established company, a little bit of a of a boiler plate, right? It is a template that has existed. And a lot of the sort of backbone of it, the skills, the experiences, the education, the responsibilities, is the same for many jobs across that organization, and the hiring manager, just as a little bit of tweaking or personalizing. And what this means and why it's sort of good news for you is that a lot of times they don't really, they're not going to spend a lot of time polishing that up, that's like, they don't because they don't need to today.
The job market is absolutely flooded, absolutely flooded. And this may be the flip side of like, you know, should you just apply to a bunch of jobs? And is it a numbers game? And we've talked about that, but the job market is absolutely flooded today, so that the people who are doing the hiring do not need to be ultra specific.
They just need to get their job posted out there, and oftentimes, actually, they have dozens or sometimes literally even hundreds of applicants before that Job has found its way to the sort of job promotion boards like LinkedIn, right? So it's been posted on their internal websites or even on their external websites, but before they've really done a sort of advertising push for it, if you will, they already have just tons and tons and tons of applicants. And perhaps the reason they have so many is because a lot of people are applying to jobs for which they're under qualified. That could be and I'm going to set that aside, but I mean, that's definitely true.
That's one of the reasons why companies turn to things like ai, the applicant tracking system, and to HR to help them weed through right screen through these hundreds and hundreds of applications before they get around to any real interviews. So it's important understand that, because when you think about your you know your tolerance for rejection or how easily you are discouraged. It's really important to understand behind the scenes, when these jobs go up, even jobs that you would think have a relatively limited applicant pool, because they are specialized in some way or.
Because they're quite senior, right? For physicians and my audience, you would think that there are not hundreds, but there are. And so these companies are absolutely inundated. That's one thing for you, just to know.
That is why, and my students know this from from the course, right? That's why it is so so so critical to have that deliberate networking strategy that you can create from scratch that absolutely works. That is the way people get jobs almost all the time. It is, yes, you have to apply to jobs, but I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to do the other work, to get to know people in these companies, which you absolutely can do.
But I set that aside for the purpose of this episode, because we're talking about, you know how to decide whether or not you should apply, right? So keep in mind, the market is absolutely flooded, dozens or sometimes hundreds of applicants, often before the job is even advertised, and then it's, you know, up just for a week or two weeks, and they take it down, and they have tons and tons and tons of applicants to get through, and many of them are not necessarily qualified in the way that a screener or that a I would recognize. So that's really it is important outside of this episode, to also understand how to optimize your resume, to also understand the networking, right? But again, putting all that aside, it's absolutely the job market is quite tight today.
So there are a handful of really good reasons to apply to jobs if you do not have all of the qualifications. So if you because we've already established that it's sort of the unicorn, it's the wish list and that that the hiring folks are often not doing a whole lot of personalizing, right? They're not really going through there and saying, Well, these couple things that you usually need in this role. I don't really need that. I definitely need this.
And so they're often not doing that, which is why you do not need to disqualify yourself based on something that you see there. So if you have you know, 50,60, 70% of the skills that are listed there. And especially, I want my audience to look at this in terms of transferable skills, because I know how you guys think. You look at the job description, you're not even sure what a lot of it means. You think you don't have it because you've been doing a different job, you've been doing a clinical job.
That doesn't mean you don't have the same skills. So again, like get get deep into the podcast or into the course to understand the transferable skills that you have, but so looking at it through that, do I have the transferable skill lens? If you have, you know, 50, 60, 70% of the things on the list, I think it is worth applying, and there's a couple of reasons for that.
The first is that you'll have the opportunity, if you have a chance to have a screening or to have an interview to network, not only with HR at that company, but sometimes with the hiring manager at that company. And that is really, really important for relationship building. Even if this particular job does not work out for you, sometimes it can lead to connections for future opportunities.
And if nothing else, it's practice, right? You have to have a practice having these screening conversations in these interview conversations. So I think it is definitely worthwhile for you to go ahead for for those benefits, right? That is something that you can see, even if it doesn't actually turn out to be the right job for you.
The other thing that is especially true in industry, but is really, frankly, also true in clinical medicine, when you think about it. I mean, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little story time here in clinical medicine. You know, when you were in med school, they said to you, by the time you graduate, half of this won't be true anymore, right? We'll have new science, and things will have evolved. And so what we're teaching you today may not be true in four years, 10 years, what have you.
And so that's true clinically also. And as an anesthesiologist, I can tell you the amount of procedural skills and the amount of the types of technology that we use to do those things changed enormously in the past 1015, years. Just absolutely enormously. So everyone is always learning on the job. So if you bring that back to the point of today, skills are always evolving.
Everyone is learning on the job in industry. That is always, always true, and so that's one of the reasons why it doesn't actually matter if you have all those skills or not, because people are learning on the job every single day. It is not at all uncommon within industry. Once you already have a job to transfer, get promoted or do something else in an area that is adjacent a different kind of role. You might move from clinical development into pharmacovigilance, or from pharmacovigilance into medical affairs and then and have no experience in doing that. It's extremely common.
Or from one therapy area to another, again, extremely common because they know that people can learn now it's a lot easier for people to get those jobs once they already have the one job, right? Because you're a known entity by your colleagues and and you know your work speaks for itself. So it is easier to do that internally. But my point is, it is absolutely a norm for people to learn new things on the job, for skills and for the way things that. Happened to be changing within the company all the time.
So whether or not you know how to do it today is irrelevant. Whether you're applying for a job or you already work there, there's an expectation that you will learn how to do new things. So most important thing really is for you to be able to show on your resume and in your networking conversations and in your interview, your transferable skills and how adept you are at learning. That's really important.
The other reason, I think, to go ahead and apply, if you have right, even 50, 60, 70% is that very often people are selected on on soft things, right? They are not actually selected for jobs based on, you know, how, how many of the various skills do they have versus the other couple people who are interviewed? Right? Most of the folks who come through the interview panel are generally thought to be qualified by the hiring manager, and they all have different things. And it's they don't stack it up in that way, where you say this person has seven out of 10 and that personally a six out of 10, and therefore the seven out of 10 wins. It's not like that, as you know, just human nature is.
It is much more likely to be some type of soft thing where you just really clicked with that team. You had a really great fit. They love your attitude, they like your communication style. They could see great potential in you, right? These are the kinds of things that often land people a job, not the specifics of what is on their resume. The resume has to get you in the door, and actually, the networking is what gets you in the door. But there's a reason that they have all these tools, right?
You have to have a compelling resume and a compelling elevator pitch, and some really good ways to handle screening conversations and so forth. But once you get to that interview stage, it becomes a lot less about how many of the items on the job description you have experience with, and just a lot more unlike, can they see themselves working with you right? Who do they want to be on the team that they have to meet with on a regular basis? So it oftentimes will boil down to that whether the folks who are hiring or are consciously aware of that or not, that is oftentimes how these decisions are made.
And so again, don't be the one who disqualifies yourself because you don't think that you have all of what they're asking for do, spend the time to think about how your skills and experiences transfer over to what it is that they need, and also how you will bridge the gap, right, how you will learn, how you will become more familiar with the subject matter that you would be taking On. Maybe there's something that you can already do that sort of demonstrates that you're learning in that space already, or that you are very you know, you that you're good at picking up and learning new things quickly. But don't disqualify yourself because you don't have those. It's it's usually not the thing that makes or breaks the job offer. All right.
There are a couple of potential downsides, so I'll mention them right. There are a few ways in which this could go wrong. There's sort of always, sort of a flip side of every coin, isn't there?
So I said one of the benefits of going ahead and applying is that you may get on the radar with the hiring manager, with HR, with a recruiter, with somebody just from applying for the one job. And even if that's not the right job for you, it can potentially lead to conversations or an exploration of a different job down the road. And that, I think, is true and beneficial. If you are applying for a job which for which you are grossly under qualified, and you're just not understanding what is you know, what the expectations are, and then that can potentially backfire, right?
You either appear to not understand the role or to not understand the industry, or you appear to not have a whole lot of insight into your own qualifications. But I'm talking again like grossly, grossly over applying so for this, I mean, in the case of, you know, a large pharmaceutical or medical device company, when you're looking at roles, we've talked about this before, looking at roles in pharmacovigilance, medical affairs, clinical development, you're looking at that director ish level role. Maybe it's an associate director, director.
This is the right entry level. If you're applying for senior director, you know, that's a long shot, but it wouldn't necessarily say don't do it. It can happen. But if you're applying to be like the head of the therapy area or something like that, you know, which is a maybe a vice president or senior vice president, I mean, that person is often expected to have, you know, a decade or more of industry experience, and they have several layers of people reporting into them, all of whom you should have done those jobs in order to become the leader there, right? So, so that is like, if you're applying to those jobs, that. Shows that you don't understand how the industry works.
You don't understand what the jobs are like, so that that could potentially reflect poorly on you. And don't take these job titles too literally, because depending upon the size of the company, it may or may not be reflective right?
So you gotta read the job description to understand that. But generally speaking, if you're looking at a job description that says, you know, one to three years in industry, or maybe it's one to five or something like that, that that off, and it's a director level. Oftentimes that's, that's entry level for physician. But if you're looking at something that says more than 10, it is not, it just is not. And so I wouldn't, I would not apply under those circumstances. If I were starting out, I wouldn't recommend that.
Also, if you're looking at jobs that clearly talk about leading and managing teams, then there's an expectation that not only do you have some people management experience, which you might have in your clinical role in some other way, but also that you could teach those people who report to you how to do their job, so you can see how, if you're new to industry, that may just, that may not work out.
So you have to, have to be thoughtful about it. Where have seen it work out is, is in the circumstances where they have a well oiled machine of a team that knows exactly what they're doing, but there's a specific set of skills that they need. And maybe in this case, I know I'm always talking about it's usually not a specific specialty, but maybe in this case, it is. They want a physician in a certain specialty. The rest of the team is a well oiled machine, so that's the thing they're looking for, and not really the industry experience. The opposite can be true as well. Sometimes they would like to have someone in a certain specialty, but if you had a lot of industry experience, they don't mind whatsoever, because they have folks that know how to do that. So again, these things are not written on the job description.
This is the behind the scenes kind of stuff, but it can help to explain why it's so variable and it feels super random, like whether or not you're successful in getting anyone's eyes on your resume. Again, that really has a lot to do with whether your resume is optimized and whether you have developed your network. It's so, so so important. But again, so back to you know the potential downside is if you're applying to something for which you are absolutely grossly under qualified, then it might reveal a certain ignorance around either your own insight to your own qualifications, or you're not really understanding how industry works.
So now that I've shared that with you, and you'll understand right, that when they're looking for someone who is quite senior, it's not because they want someone who's a physician. They're getting that even at the junior levels. It's that they want someone who not only has done their jobs before, but could train somebody else on how to do them. So that makes sense. Why that wouldn't be appropriate to be your first job most of the time. Okay?
The other potential flip side to growth, right? And we've said they might see your potential. They might see you know that you have an opportunity to grow, and they may want to invest in you. And so that's one of the things that is often true. When people get their first industry jobs, they really impress upon that hiring manager that like they can learn it, they can do it. And people are interested in developing skills of their new hires. But the flip side of that is you may experience an incredibly steep learning curve. So as you're evaluating whether or not you have any of the skills or any of the experiences on there, just think about, you know, Is this too much?
Are you writing off more than you can true, will you struggle in the role if you get it? And because that's also not good, right? You don't want to be struggling in the role. Struggling in the role. Should you? Should you get it? So you want to think about how to bridge that gap. This might be more true in smaller, smaller companies, startup companies, right, where the teams are really tiny.
In a large pharmaceutical company, you get hired, you're you're one of many, many medical directors, and there's a lot of people, there's a lot of processes, a lot of policies, a lot of just ways to learn, like they'll tell you how to get things done in a smaller company, there's a lot less of that. And so you want to think about, how will you ensure your own success? Could you end up struggling in the role if you apply for something that's, you know, sort of a stretch for you, for what you are under qualified.
That's the flip side of growth. I think that's more of an issue with smaller companies, really, a lot less of an issue, maybe a non issue in big companies, but really only you know yourself, right and you know how much of a learning curve you can handle.
And the final thing, I guess I'll say, as we're talking about, you know you don't want to discourage yourself, you don't want to disqualify yourself, and only you know how this job search process is affecting you, right? I A lot of people that I have worked with have applied to dozens and hundreds of jobs. I. For which they get, you know, and this is very common, right? For which they get almost auto rejected, right? They get some sort of a bot is rejecting them. You can tell, because it comes like 10 seconds after you submit. Is a pretty common experience.
And if that type of thing discourages you, then I would suggest you take an approach where you're not applying to as many roles that you're under qualified for, but really focusing your time and effort on developing those relationships and really zeroing in on the things for which you're most likely to be successful. If that kind of thing doesn't bother you and you can let it roll off.
Then I say, get out your spreadsheet and go ahead and you can approach it as a numbers game, and apply to as many roles as you want, even those that you feel like might be a stretch, because it's not going to bother you if you get a rejection, because you're going to realize that the job market is very saturated, and also that a lot of times there's a specific skill set that they're looking for, that you may or may not have, and you're going to realize you you've put out a stretch, right? And so if it's not going to discourage you and sort of end up influencing in a negative way your entire career transition journey, you know, then you can apply to as many jobs as you have the time and effort to apply to. I will say, I think it is a big waste of time to apply to jobs for which you have not personalized your resume. And I mean that like having gone through the entire resume in the entire job description and made sure that you're optimizing, it's a lot of work, right? And even if you're using a i to help you, it's still it's a lot of work to be sure that's correct. I don't recommend really applying to any jobs if you're not going to bother to do that, because your likelihood of success is so low.
I also recommend that before people start approaching things as a numbers game and just applying to tons and tons of jobs that you have, that you know you have enough time to spend the number of hours that you need to spend developing the network in the way that we teach, because, again, that's what will get you the job nine times out of 10, right? So you do have to have a good resume, but that's not if. What if all you're doing is blanketing the universe with a canned resume? Your likelihood of getting an interview is just so low, it's going to feel super discouraging, and you're going to end up saying, I've applied to hundreds of jobs and I'm not getting anywhere.
Getting anywhere, then you're gonna feel like you're not a hirable or desirable candidate. And that's just flatly not true. But the process is, I mean, that's just not the right process, right? Just the blanket apply to places is not the right process. Yes, you should expect a lot of rejections, and yes, you should expect it to take a while. But the the thing that will get you the results is not necessarily the number of places you apply to. It is these other elements, but once you have those in place, and obviously you do have to apply to jobs, and you probably have to apply to a good number of jobs, because, as I mentioned, the market is saturated.
They've got tons of applicants before they even posted. A lot of times have internal applicants that are very interested, that they already know, right? And those folks have a little bit of a leg up on you, and that's just the reality. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't bother to apply, because that's not true of every job. I know. It's not my students are, are still getting jobs, even the ones who have absolutely no experience, they're brand new, right? This, this, but it is. It takes a while and and they do the work. That's the thing.
They do the work the way that it's outlined in the course. So anyway, wrapping up for today, should you apply to a job when you are under qualified? I think most of the time the answer to this is yes. If, if, with your transferable skills, you have a sizable portion, right? Doesn't have to be the direct skill. It can be a transferable skill, and you have a sizable portion. So that, with a straight face, you could say, like, I know I can add some value, yeah, I'd have a lot to learn, but I bring this to the table, if you have some of that, then you go ahead and apply, because everybody knows you will learn it on the job.
So that that's, I think, what's most important there, just don't get way, way out of your depth and look for things like, you know is it is there line management responsibilities, especially if there's more than one layer where you'd be responsible for people who are responsible for people that person should have experience. That's not the right entry level job for you. But so like those are the kinds of qualifications that you could zero in on and say, okay, under qualified for this job. But other things, like technical duties that you would do on the day to day, I would not worry about that. Don't let yourself.
Don't disqualify yourself, right? Let someone else do that, because a lot of them will, and that's part of the process. But go ahead, and I think even today, even with the totally saturated job market, I think, I think you have to, you will almost never see a job post in pharmaceutical, medical device, biotech, where they say you do not need any experience. It's I have seen it. I've seen but I can probably count on one hand the number of postings that I have seen like that where they have said industry experience is not necessary. I can count on one hand, and probably, I mean, in the entirety of the time that I've been in industry, which is eight, eight years now.
So you're not going to see that, even though it's oftentimes true, right? Because people get hired all the time without having industry experience, but you're not going to see at the top of a job posting, hey, no experience necessary. That's just not their style. It's not how they do it. You read between the lines to understand the ones that are appropriate for you, but even the ones that you feel under qualified for, if you if you didn't feel under qualified, you wouldn't have anything to apply for. I mean, right? If you're making a transition, you're gonna be new in industry, you're not going to know how to do those things. You're going to feel that way, but you go ahead and apply anyway.
And I'll leave you with this. And I've said it before, but I'll say it again. If a person really had all of the things on that job description, right? If they really had mastered already all of those things that a person is looking for, they'd be ready to be that person's boss, right? They would be ready to be they would be ready for promotion. They would be ready for the next job up. That's not the job they'd be applying for. So if you can look down a job description, this is for my people already in industry, right?
If you can look down a job description and say, I have absolutely mastered all of that, I have tons of experience and all of that, then you my friend, are ready for a promotion and a more senior role. So yes, apply, even when you feel under qualified, is the short answer, with just a few caveats that we've gotten into in this episode. Do not neglect your networking. Do not neglect your prep, for your elevator pitch, for screening, for interviews, all of that is so so so important. Do not neglect understanding your transferable skills. It may feel like it's the only thing that you have, it's actually really substantial. I guarantee it.
All right. I hope that helps. When you're thinking about jobs, you're looking through all these job postings and you're saying, I don't have this, I don't have that. I don't have the experience that they're looking for, and I'll never get something you will. You can and don't look at it that way. Go ahead and apply, but do not neglect all these other areas have been emphasizing. They really are much more important, and they are the secret that gets you those results. That's it for today. Bye for now.
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