> You’ve probably heard the following statistic: Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.
Ah, I had not. Landing a job I don't know how to do 2/5ths of sounds awful.
Ah, I had not. Landing a job I don't know how to do 2/5ths of sounds awful.
Job advertisement: Immediate requirement for an illusionist/escapist. Must have 15 years experience in inverted underwater lockpicking. Nice to have some experience in juggling chainsaws.
Job reality: You do coin and card tricks at children's birthday parties.
Even if the job does require something you don't know, it is very likely that--no matter what it is--you could spend a few hours on the Internet learning how to fake it well enough to fool anyone short of an actual expert until you get the real on-the-job experience.
Then don't be an engineer?
Seriously, an engineer's job is to invent new things that no one has done before, and tell other people how to reliably build more of them. If you start a project with a 100% clear vision of how to get to the end, then you are already behind your competition.
Not knowing how to do 40%, and not being intimidated by 95%, seems like about the right mix.
The next position that I'm waiting for a written job offer for: I don't know the language, haven't ever developed on the OS, and I'll be looking at 15 years of legacy code. It sounds like an exciting opportunity to expand my knowledge on someone else's time and do something I haven't done before.
Granted, I never would've applied on my own; they contacted me through LinkedIn. But that kind of thing is how I expect I'll find all my work in the foreseeable future.