Question
How relevant do you really think the required experience is on a job description?
I have almost three years of professional experience in addition to my degree. A company wants to interview me for a job, but it is a managerial position. I do not yet know if that means supervising other employees or not. The job description asks for at least 10 years experience.
They have my resume, which clearly describes three years experience. They called me, so they must be interested in at least talking to me. I really want this position, so I will be reading up at Ask The Headhunter. I have done the “job duties and responsibilities” before, and I feel comfortable with all of it, but I haven’t done it for 10 years.
Is there anything in particular I should stress in the interview? Something that will help them to see I am capable of handling the increased responsibilities? I know that my age is working against me on this one. Do you think I have a shot?
Nick’s Reply
Ah, a case of “reverse age discrimination!” You’re too young! I wonder how many older readers would trade places with you, swapping the kind of discrimination you face with what they’ve encountered. In a sense, it’s all the same, and it’s silly. What matters is not a number of years but the ability to do the job profitably, and that brings us to the question of experience.
Companies often bend their “experience requirements” because these are just guidelines, not written in stone. You may have other qualities that are important to the company.
Preparation is indeed key. I’d start by calling back the person who scheduled the interview. Hopefully, that’s the hiring manager. (If it’s not, you must try and identify the hiring manager so you can talk with them.)
How to Say It
“I’m looking forward to our meeting. Because I want to make our meeting as profitable as possible for both of us, it would help to know a bit more about the job. That way I can show you how I could apply my skills specifically to the tasks you need done. May I ask you a couple of brief questions?”
How to get past the required experience
You should have no more than two or three very specific questions ready, all of them pertaining to the work. For example, “Will this job involve managing people, or only my own tasks?” and “In what way do you want your new hire to improve your operations during the first six months or one year?”
Do not ask general questions like, “What’s the job?” that reveal pure ignorance. (I expect you had a pretty good idea what the job was, or you would not have applied for it.)
Think carefully about the questions you want to ask. Keep them very brief, and make sure you focus on the work and on how you will do it. Don’t try to turn your chat into an interview. Don’t get too detailed. (Unless, of course, the manager expands the discussion.) Thank the manager and reiterate that you look forward to your meeting and to “showing you what I can do for your business.”
Required experience or required preparation?
Once you know more about the position, your next chore is research. Start at the “high level” and drill down. Study:
- the industry the company is in (competition, market, etc.)
- the specific company (history, finances, products, successes, failures)
- the department (study its functions)
- the manager (can you talk to someone who might know him?)
- other employees (tap your friends – do they know anyone at the company?)
For each of these ask yourself, what problems and challenges does each “level” face? How would you tackle these? (It’s okay to speculate and have some fun with this.) What would you need to know more about? What tools would you need?
The business plan
Then, prepare a brief business plan that shows how you’d apply experience you do have to accomplish the tasks in this job. Break down the necessary tasks, and how you’d do them. After all, any job is really a small business unto itself, and it requires a plan. If you lack a skill, that’s okay, but explain how you’d get the help/tools/info you’d need to learn to do it. Try to figure out how your method for doing the work would be profitable to the company. That is, how would it increase revenue or lower costs?
(You don’t need anything as extensive as this outline for a business plan, but it will give you some ideas.)
Employers aren’t good at mapping a candidate’s skills and experience to a job. If you do it for them, the payoff to you can be tremendous because no other applicant is likely to attempt this. That’s the single best thing you can do to “help them to see I am capable of handling the increased responsibilities.”
This kind of approach has been shown to work again and again, assuming you’re talking to a manager who “gets it” and isn’t just looking for warm bodies who will just follow orders.
This article may help: The Basics: The New Interview.
It’s a lot of work, but if you really want that job, be ready to show exactly how you’re going to do it.
Yes, you have a shot. The interviewer won’t get stuck on your age — or on your insufficient experience — as long as you’re ready to control the interview by focusing on the work that needs to be done and how you’re going to do it. That’s what a good manager really wants to see.
Did you have all the required experience for the job you were hired to do? If not, how did you convince the employer to hire you? What is as — or more — important than years of experience?
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I think most job descriptions are poorly written, over loaded with requirements, and not thought through before posting.
If you have 65-70% of the requirements and have performed similar work before, I would interview and write a mini business plan, as Nick said, and show them how you would approach this job and how you learned to do new things in other jobs and are able to do the same for this employer.
As @Anna noted, job descriptions can be like the sound of 1 hand clapping. Not all that informative, mostly due to a combination of laziness and idealism.
As a denizen of many companies, & crafting piles of job descriptions, just understand this. To a hiring manager they are a necessary part of the hiring process. They are your ticket to play. No description, no req/authorization to hire. As to content. depending on the HM’s personal standards, they can range from a fine example of business writing to just a pile of platitudes. A checkoff item.
On your end, your resume has 1 primary function, to effect an interview. Job done, you’ve got one.
And with it a clue. they asked for 10 years experience, you have 3. But they still want to talk. Why?
As noted, the key to this is the HM. And Nick’s offered some great questions. Use them.
But I’d add. Let’s give the HM & the Description the benefit of the doubt that the 10 years mgmt experience is real. Yet the HM wants to talk to someone with just 3? That’s a non-trivial difference.
Why bring you in? Because you may be seeing an HM who’s amid organization development and/or a reorg.
Someone who’s looking for a sr mgr with 10 years but interested in someone with 3, suggests the HM sees a role(s) for jr managers as well. Normally I’d want to find the sr mgr 1st, someone who’d greatly influence & help building the organization & then roll in other contributors. And having spotted you, sees an opportunity & will talk.
This also suggests that the HM sees no one presently on board that fits. Also related is to understand if this is a new role? or a replacement? Are you seeing a hole open because a sr mgr walked?
So in addition to the suggested job related explorations, think past that to the organization. This invites 2 question to the HM. “What are you trying to do with your organization (or better, the X department? “And how can I help you?”
It’s generally a good question anyway, one that will usually trigger an enthusiastic reaction from the HR mgr which will give you a lot of useful intel.
There are other clues in experience difference. I spent a lifetime in hi-tech companies. The techies constantly expect their managers to be technical. The more the better. Hence they turn their best techies into managers, often getting crappy managers. The HM may have fallen in love with your technical bona fides & could care less about your mgmt skills.
I engaged in a lot of managerial recruitment as part of interviewing teams or as a recruiter. And the # of times that interviewers have dug into managerial skills is rare. Signaling how much it mattered. So it’s not surprising to me that the difference is overlooked. But the why is important to know so dig into it.
So to the best you can, research that company from an organizational standpoint. How they structure things.. how stable it is organizationally, any signs of reorgs and/or departures that signal changes.
Be prepared to be technically savvy, and also to speak managerese. You’ll do fine.
“they turn their best techies into managers, often getting crappy managers.”
So true! In our industry it’s, “Take a great engineer and make a lousy manager out of them.”
Requirements are really just a suggestion. The way jobs are written these days no one will have everything listed. It also depends on how desperate they are and the labor market overall.
A department within a large state university wanted to hire me because I’d worked with them as a consultant. Naturally they had a hard and fast requirement of a college degree. I don’t have one, not even close to one, but back then I had a solid 12+ years experience with over a year on the project. The hiring mgr went to bat for me and got that “carved in stone” requirement waived.
If you’re missing something you don’t need to explain it away, instead show how your experience gives you the skills in a different way, and the difference will make more money, spend less time, or whatever their need is.
These job descriptions are written by somebody in HR, and as Nick has said before, they usually have no clue what the job actually requires or how to evaluate someone for it.
Back in 1999, I saw an IT recruiting ad which included a requirement for
“10 years of JAVA experience.”
Java was released in May 1995.
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Show them you can do the job, and you should do fine.
A reminder that you should INVESTIGATE the COMPANY more than they evaluate you.
Terrible companies have lots of turnover and many open positions.
Great companies have little turnover, and will fill positions by referral.
THEREFORE, MOST positions you see advertised are in mediocre to terrible companies.
Find a great company you want to work for, and figure out what they need that you can do.
@Peter:
“Find a great company you want to work for, and figure out what they need that you can do.”
That is golden advice but so difficult for people to let it guide their job search and career. A good job is a good job. A great company will have several great jobs for you over the years. Start with finding a great company.
Always determine your potential cash-oin contribution.
One “minor” thing to note is that if one does take on their first managerial role, be sure to live by “Delegate of Die.” It will be hard to let go of doing everything yourself, but you must quickly learn to let your team do the work you manage.