Quintessential Careers:
Underqualified? Ten Tips to Inspire Employers to Take a Leap of Faith
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
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If you're anything like me, you've sometimes spotted an employment ad or job posting and said to yourself, "I could do that job." Yet the job is totally out of your field, and you have no actual experience in that area.
How do you portray yourself as qualified for a job for which you have no proven track record? The underqualified or just plain unqualified label most often plagues new graduates with limited experience, as well as career-changers whose experience is outside the area they now wish to pursue.
For both groups, fighting the underqualified label is a tough proposition. Let's face it -- all other things being equal, most employers would prefer to hire candidates with the right qualifications and experience in the field over candidates, no matter how enthusiastic, who lack qualifications. A difficult battle, yes, but it's not impossible to beat the underqualified label. This article proposes 10 strategies for overcoming a lack of qualifications.
1. Exploit your transferable skills.
You may not have all the qualifications required for a given job, but
chances are, you possess a skillset that contains abilities needed
for many jobs, including the job you covet. Scrutinize ads and job
postings for the kind of job you seek, and identify skills you've
demonstrated that are needed for these jobs. Typical universally
sought skills include communication, interpersonal, teamwork, and
leadership skills. List your transferable and applicable skills
prominently on your resume. In your cover letters, take the next step
by explaining how your skills apply to the job you're pursuing.
Read
more about transferable skills.
2. Consider playing up school and other unpaid experience.
Perhaps you have no paid experience in the field you seek to enter,
but you do have some applicable education and/or unpaid experience
(through internships or volunteer work). Don't be afraid to list
school and unpaid experience in the main experience section of your
resume. Experience is experience; it rarely matters whether it's paid
or not. If unpaid experience helped you develop skills that are
crucial to the type of job you seek, it's fair game for the
experience section of your resume. I recently had a resume client who
had a terrific background in restaurant management but was seeking to
become a financial adviser. To further complicate matters, his most
recent experience was as a school administrator. He was, however, an
MBA student with coursework and project experience in finance. I
wanted the first item the employer saw in his experience section to
be finance-related, so I listed "MBA Student" first, with bullet
points about his finance-related activities. Another client had 30
years of experience in the IT field but really wanted to be a park
ranger. His most recent paid experience was in IT, but he had rich
volunteer experience in the environmental, nature, and outdoors
areas. So, we listed his volunteer experience first on his resume.
For a good tool to identify high points of your school and unpaid
experience, see the
school
and unpaid experience portion of our Accomplishments Worksheet.
3. Consider a chrono-functional resume.
If you seek a job for which you are questionably qualified, your job
history may be more of a liability than a selling point. Thus, a
resume format that de-emphasizes job history in favor of skills that
are applicable to the desired job is worth consideration. The
chrono-functional resume highlights outstanding skills and
achievements that might otherwise be buried within the job-history
section while simultaneously presenting, yet de-emphasizing, the
chronology of jobs. The focus is on clusters of transferable skills
and experiences that are most relevant to the position for which you
are applying.
Be aware, however, that some employers disdain functional formats of any kind, finding them confusing or even annoying. Some employers like to know exactly what you did in each job. Recruiters/headhunters particularly reject functional formats, so this approach should never be used if you are primarily targeting recruiters with your job search. Employers in conservative fields are not big fans of functional formats, nor are international employers. Functional formats, even chrono-functional, also are not acceptable on many online job boards. Read more in our articles, What Resume Format is Best for You? and Should You Consider a Functional Format for Your Resume?
4. Don't apply for jobs for which you're grossly underqualified, but
do remember that job postings and employment ads are often employer
wish lists.
The fact that desperate job-seekers send resumes willy-nilly for jobs
for which they are not remotely qualified is a major reason employers
are so overwhelmed and unable to respond to job-seekers. The resumes
of the unqualified clog the system. So don't apply if you are
completely unqualified, but if you excel in some
qualifications, consider applying. Most employers do not expect the
candidate they hire to have every qualification listed in the job
posting. An ad or job posting represents the ideal candidate. If you
can show you are extremely strong in some of the areas listed in the
posting, you may get called for an interview even if you lack other
qualifications. Pay attention to the order in which qualifications
are listed in the job posting as they are usually listed in order of
importance. If you excel in the most important qualifications,
employers may be willing to overlook weaknesses in the less important
areas.
5. Consider a two-column or "t-formation" cover letter.
A particularly effective way to sell the qualifications you do have
while obscuring the ones you don't is to use a two-column format in
which you quote in the left-hand column specific qualifications that
come right from the employer's job posting and in the right-hand
column, your attributes that meet those qualifications. The format
clearly demonstrates that you are qualified in so many areas that the
employer may overlook the areas in which you lack the exact
qualifications.
See
a sample letter in a two-column format.
6. Indicate your flexibility and willingness to learn or gain
additional training.
When separating resumes into piles, one category employers sometimes
use is "underqualified but trainable." If you cannot convince an
employer that you are qualified, you may be able to make a case for
being trainable. State in your resume and cover letter that you are
an enthusiastic and quick learner who can rapidly get up to speed
with job knowledge. If a job carries a specific educational,
training, licensing, or certification requirement, state your
willingness to pursue that requirement. Example: "I am completely
committed to pursuing Series 7 and Series 63 licensure." Tread very
carefully, however, in the "willing to learn" realm. Employers don't
like to be reminded of the time and expense of training
underqualified employees. Use solid examples to demonstrate your past
ability to learn quickly, as well as strong statements of future
willingness to undergo training, education, certification, or
licensure. If you've already enrolled for the appropriate training,
your case will obviously be even stronger.
7. Try the "bait and switch."
Bait and switch is a negative term in advertising, but it can be used
in a positive way in job-hunting. Let's say there's a fairly
high-level job that you are marginally qualified for. Consider
applying for that job while simultaneously indicating a willingness
to be considered for a job that reports to the high-level position. I
recently worked with a resume client who had excellent experiential
qualifications for a job with a large, well-known software firm --
but the position required a PhD, and my client possessed only an associate's
degree. To entice the employer to call him for an interview, we made
a great case for my client's experiential background in his resume
and cover letter. Knowing, however, that his lack of educational
qualifications might be a deal-breaker, we included a statement at
the end of his cover letter that he would also like to be considered
for a position as assistant to the person in the high-level position.
This technique works best when a company is assembling a staff for a
newly created department or unit. It also works with startup
companies building a workforce.
8. Find out more about the employer's needs.
Let's say there's a company or industry in which you'd love to work.
Whether or not you've actually been rejected for lack of
qualifications, you know that on paper, you are not quite the right
fit in that company or industry. Try finding out more about the
employer's needs, problems, and challenges than what is readily
apparent in want ads and job postings. The trick is to discover needs
that you can fulfill, paving the way to perhaps creating a position
for yourself. How do you find out about these needs? Performing
company research is a good start, and you can find great tools in our
Guide
to Researching Companies, Industries, and Countries, but the best
approach is informational interviewing. See our
Informational
Interviewing Tutorial to learn
how.
9. Consider a career portfolio with work samples.
Seeing is believing. If you interview with an employer who is not
quite convinced of your qualifications, you can bolster your case
with a portfolio that shows your ability to do the job. Imagine how
impressed the skeptical employer will be if you address
underqualification concerns by showing living proof of your
abilities. The portfolio can contain a sampling of your best work,
including reports, papers, studies, brochures, projects,
presentations, CD-ROMs, videos, and other multimedia formats,
publications, reports, testimonials and letters of recommendations,
as well as awards and honors.
But what if you don't have samples related to the job you're applying for because you don't have work experience in that area? Create them. If you're applying for a job in Web design because you have Web skills but no paid experience, show Web sites that you designed for yourself and for friends. If you have computer-programming skills but lack paid experience in the field, show programs that you've written on your own or for school projects. If you are inexperienced for the journalism or public-relations job you're applying for, there's no reason you can't submit sample news and feature stories or press releases you've written. The material doesn't have to be published.
A good way to introduce the portfolio is to ask, "Do you know of any obstacles that would stand in the way of your hiring me?" If the interviewer says something like, "I'm just not sure you have the experience to do the job," you can say, "Let me show you some samples from my portfolio that demonstrate my ability to do this job."
And what if you can't get an interview that would enable you to show your portfolio? Create a Web-based portfolio with links to samples of your work. Include the URL to your portfolio in your resume and cover letter and encourage employers to check it out.
Read more about career portfolios in our articles, Your Job Skills Portfolio: Giving You an Edge in the Marketplace and Expanding the Definition and Use of Career Portfolios.
10. Consider volunteering to work on a unpaid trial basis.
There may be no better way to demonstrate enthusiasm and commitment
to a job for which you are marginally qualified than to offer to work
for a short period on an unpaid trial basis. Strike a balance between
how long you could afford to work without pay and a length of time
that enables you to show you can do the job. Also be careful here not
to come off sounding too desperate.
An alternative to an unpaid trial is asking to demonstrate skills through a short-term project. Let's say, for example, that a job's requirements include the ability to prepare PowerPoint presentations for executives. Ask the interviewer for a specific assignment typical of what you would be asked to complete if you were hired. Then come back in the next day or so with a PowerPoint show that will knock your interviewer's socks off. In his book College Grad Job Hunter, Brian Krueger, describes similar approaches, The Sneak Preview Technique and The Proof Positive Technique.
Final Thoughts
While the strategies presented here can go a long way in warding off
the underqualified label, they are not foolproof. It's sobering to
realize that, given a choice, many employers prefer to hire the most
qualified candidate. Yet considerable research shows that it's not
always the most qualified candidate who gets the job but the one with
the best rapport with the interviewer or the most enthusiasm and
confidence. So, maintain a positive attitude, and keep showing that
you are enthusiastic and confident. While you are waiting to land a
job for which you may seem underqualified, consider pursuing training
that will bolster your qualifications. Consider also doing an
internship (you don't have to be a college student) or volunteer work
to build skills in your weaker areas.
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate
publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author,
and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers,
edits QuintZine,
an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling
in the job search at A Storied
Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her
personal Website
or reach her by e-mail at
kathy(at)quintcareers.com.
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