The Job Requirements Are a Wish List. Not a Checklist.

You found the perfect job in Berlin. It checks every box for the job you want. The right location. The right salary range. The right company. Then you start looking at the job requirements, ticking through your head... yes, yes, yes, mostly yes, kinda yes, ehh... maybe not that one. Or the next. And suddenly the perfect job doesn't look so perfect. So you close the tab, and move on.

You don't apply because you don't have all the requirements. And unless you meet them all, what's the point in applying? They're gonna find someone who has them all, right? So why waste my time?

Truth? No one meets every single requirement. And even if they did, it doesn't make them the right person for the job.

So let's talk about when to close the tab and when to apply anyway.

Women, Lean In

You've probably heard the stat. Men apply when they meet 60% of the requirements. Women wait until they hit 100%. Sheryl Sandberg put it in Lean In. It's been all over LinkedIn for a decade.

Here's the thing though ... it's not actually backed by solid research. It came from an internal HP report that was never meant to be a scientific study, and nobody has been able to cleanly replicate it since.

But here's what IS real. A 2022 study found that when women look at individual requirements, they score themselves higher than men do. But when we take in the entire posting, looking at all the 'requirements,' men are more likely to say 'yep, close enough' and hit apply. And women look and see the few items they're missing, and go 'better wait for the next one.'

Women see the gaps. Men see the overall fit and go for it anyway.

It boils down to this: Women apply for 20% fewer jobs than men. Which means fewer interviews, fewer offers, and a lot more closed tabs on jobs that were actually worth applying for.

Checklist or Wish List?

A hiring manager needs someone to fill a role, so they sit down and start building the list. And it's aspirational.

They are describing the perfect candidate. The one who exists in their imagination, who has every skill, every certification, every year of experience, every language, every everything.

They are not describing the floor for who they will consider. They are describing the ceiling of what they hope to find, and they know, almost universally, that they will not find it.

Job postings are written like a wish list. Look at any "entry level" position and it often says "5 years of experience." Or "must be fluent in French" often means B2 is enough for the right candidate. They're generally negotiable depending on how good you are at everything else.

Hiring managers know this. Recruiters know this. The only person treating the requirements as a hard checklist where missing two items means do not apply is you.

And then we go International...

When you are applying from abroad, the stakes already feel higher. You need this to work. You are already going to require sponsorship, maybe even a relocation package ... and you know it. So you set the bar impossibly higher for yourself because you feel like you have to deserve the extra effort before you've even hit submit.

And then you add the requirements checklist on top of that elevated bar, and suddenly you are sitting on a job you are 70% qualified for, in a country that has a documented shortage of people who do what you do, and you are not applying because of three bullet points that were probably written by an HR department trying to be thorough.

That is not a qualification problem. That is a perception problem.

The Actual Rule

If you meet roughly half the requirements, especially if you meet the core ones, the ones that describe what the job actually is day to day ... apply. Let them tell you no. That is their job. Your job is to get your application in front of them and make the case.

The worst thing that happens is silence, which is already what's happening while you don't apply.

The best thing that happens is that they see someone who is genuinely strong across the things that matter and can grow into the rest, and you get a conversation you never would have had if you'd talked yourself out of it at the job posting stage.

You are not doing yourself any favors by being the strictest gatekeeper in your own job search. The company has a hiring process for filtering candidates. It is not your job to do that filtering for them before you've even submitted your name.

Apply. Let them decide.