Whether you’ve seen it included at the end of a job posting, referenced in a book, or mentioned in dinner conversation, it’s a frequently quoted statistic: Men apply to jobs when they only meet 60% of the desired qualifications, and women apply to jobs when they meet all of the desired qualifications. Though it was never formally published, this statistic supposedly came from a decade-old internal report by Hewlett Packard (the original company behind HP computers). While some have discounted it as just a comment from a senior executive that somehow made its way to our collective consciousness, the sentiment of the statistic has been mirrored in many studies since.
The reasons behind this supposed gender application gap aren’t as cut and dry as you might think. A common explanation for the disparity stems back all the way to the 1980s, also known as the “Have it All” era, when many women aspired to perfectly balance their professional and family lives (though many realized soon after that reaching this aspiration just meant juggling everything with little to no time for leisure or rest). Self-help books of that era largely attributed women’s career struggles to a lack of confidence, arguing that they could make advances if they just *wanted it* more.
While this way of thinking may seem as out of touch as your mom’s high school perm, it’s still frequently used to explain gender application gap statistics to this day. But the truth is, there are *so many* other reasons women may hesitate to click that “apply now” button — and plenty more reasons to do so anyway — says Lauren McGoodwin, a recruiter-turned-CEO of Career Contessa, a career consulting firm for women. Here’s what she has to say about the gender application gap — and how to close it.
Is the gender application gap real?
While no study has been conducted to replicate the exact findings of HP’s internal report, studies since have found similar disparities in job applications between men and women. For example, a LinkedIn Gender Insights report from 2019 showed that women were 14% less likely to apply for a job after viewing it compared to men, even though women are 16% more likely than men to get hired for the jobs they *do* apply to. Backing up this sentiment, early findings from a 2023 University of Pittsburgh study also found that while men and women view job postings in male-dominated fields the same amount, far fewer women actually apply to them.
Before she founded Career Contessa, McGoodwin worked for two years as a university recruiter for Hulu, and says she absolutely saw parallels between this stat and her negotiations with new hires. “As a recruiter, obviously people [already] applied for the job if [I was] seeing their information, but it was reflected in the negotiation or the job offer,” McGoodwin says. “A man can have an OK interview, but he thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread and negotiates really hard for a stronger compensation package, where a woman who has a great interview and we’re super thrilled to have her, she might just accept the first offer that we put out there.”
McGoodwin believes that the so-called confidence gap in men and women can be at least partially explained by socialization and prior workplace experience, rather than an intrinsic difference among genders. “Maybe you don’t get as detailed feedback as your male colleague does, and so you aren’t as confident when you go to pitch that new idea,” she says. “I think oftentimes women have just a natural tendency to put their head down and feel like if they’re working hard, someone will come tap them on the shoulder and be like, ‘Hey, you should go for that promotion.’ And I think men are just a lot better [at that] — probably from how they were raised and societal norms and being told, ‘If you want something, go out and get it.’ It was OK for ‘boys to just be boys’ and for girls it was like, ‘be nice, share, be likable.’ You can’t say that that stuff doesn’t then play a role later on in the workplace too.”
Is confidence really what’s standing in the way between women and their dream jobs?
While it might be easy to write off job application disparities as being due to a sheer lack of women’s confidence in their abilities, there’s also another major factor to consider: how men and women interpret the “rules” of job applications.
Tara Mohr, an author and women’s leadership coach, conducted a survey for the Harvard Business Review in 2014 that asked men and women the top reason they didn’t apply for a particular job. The answer “I didn’t think I could do the job well” was the least reported percentage for both men and women. Instead, among women’s responses, the biggest percentages were “I didn’t think they would hire me since I didn’t meet the qualifications, “I didn’t want to waste my time and energy,” and “I didn’t think they would hire me since I didn’t meet the qualifications and I didn’t want to put myself out there if I was likely to fail.” One reason in particular had a notable gender difference: 15% of women didn’t apply because “I was following the guidelines about who should apply,” while only 8% of men responded this way.
Mohr concluded that “all three of these barriers, which together account for 78% of women’s reasons for not applying to a job, have to do with believing that the job qualifications are real requirements.” So, it really might not be that women have less confidence in their abilities than men, but that they overestimate how by-the-book the hiring process really is.
Desired qualifications are important, but they’re not everything.
So if desired qualifications aren’t the end-all-be-all of the hiring process, what are other things you can do to stand out? McGoodwin emphasizes three ways to sell yourself in the hiring process: highlighting your transferable skills, being able to tell your personal story effectively, and networking.
“When candidates are thinking about applying for a job or taking on extra responsibility at work, they’ll be like, ‘But I haven’t done this thing yet.’ And [I have to say], ‘Yeah, you haven’t done this particular thing yet, but you had never done that [other] thing either, and look how successful you were at it,’” McGoodwin says. She often advises clients on “how to tell their story in a compelling way — what’s the 10% of you that’s 100% relevant to [the employer], and how can we sell that part?”
McGoodwin suggests looking for parallels between prior experience and desired qualifications of a new position, even if they’re not directly related. She gives her own work experience as an example: Before she was a recruiter, McGoodwin worked as an administrative assistant. Despite having no recruiting experience when she was applying to open positions, she recognized transferrable skills from her job at the time — answering phone calls, getting back to people, staying organized — and sold those during her interview. “While those skills might’ve been under a different job responsibility, I was able to say, ‘OK, let me connect the dots between what this job description is looking for and what I’ve done.’”
Hand-in-hand with selling transferable skills is being able to effectively tell your story as a candidate, McGoodwin says. “‘This is what I’ve been doing, this is where I want to go, or this is why I’m the right fit for your job’ — sell that story to the person.”
While many people find networking intimidating or transactional, McGoodwin says it doesn’t have to be. “If you’re a relationship-minded person, approach networking like that — as not just ‘What you can do for me?’ but also, ‘How I can help and support your role?’” she says.
One of the biggest pieces of advice McGoodwin wants to leave young professionals with is to be proactive versus reactive in your career journey. “Oftentimes people will react to things as they come their way, versus being in the driver’s seat and being like, ‘This is the direction I want to take my career, and I’m going to work backwards from there and figure out strategically: What am I looking for? What are projects I should be taking on? Who are people that I should be working with?’”
Apply to the job even if you don’t meet every qualification. Studies show women apply if they meet 10/10 requirements whereas men apply if they meet 6/10.
Imposter syndrome is real but your ambition is realer. Stop counting yourself out of blessings that have your name on it.
— Latesha Byrd (@Latesha_Byrd) April 28, 2020
While statistics about women and work may be jarring to hear, talking about them is a great way to break down some of the fears and stigmas around the hiring process. “For those women who have not been applying for jobs because they believe the stated qualifications must be met, the statistic is a wake-up call that not everyone is playing the game that way,” Mohr said in an article about her study for the Harvard Business Review. “When those women know others are giving it a shot even when they don’t meet the job criteria, they feel free to do the same.”