Do Women Lack Confidence When Job Searching?

When it comes to applying for a job, women seem to lack the same level of confidence that men have while job hunting. But how are women less confident, and why? Keep reading to learn more, especially if you are a woman and you are planning on searching for a new job.

Women Don’t Apply Unless They’re Qualified

If a woman is searching for work, she will only apply to those positions that she feels she’s totally qualified for. If she feels less than 100% qualified, she won’t apply. The opposite is true of men. In fact, men have no problem applying for a job opening even if they only meet around 60% of the job’s required qualifications. Even though there are many services that can help women look for work and apply to jobs, such as executive resume services, they still lack the confidence to apply to a lot of the job opportunities that they find.

The Other Reasons Why Women Don’t Apply to More Jobs

Even though a lot of experts will attribute this particular difference in the behavior of men and women to the fact that men are more confident in their abilities, there are other experts who think that there’s more to it than that. Instead of it just being about a lack of faith in herself, a woman may not apply for other reasons, and a survey of more than 1,000 women and men who mostly consisted of United States professionals proves that.

The real reason why so many women don’t apply for every job that they’d like to have is really because they simply don’t think that they’ll be considered unless they meet all of the qualifications. After all, what’s the point in wasting their time putting a resume and cover letter together if they know that it’s likely going to be ignored?

The Differences Between Men and Women Job Applicants

Women do not want to face failure, which is yet another big reason why they don’t apply to jobs for which they don’t have all of the qualifications that are listed in the job description. About 25% of women stated that, if they didn’t think that they’d get hired, they didn’t want to waste their time and energy and end up failing in the end.

On the flipside, only about 13% of men feel this way when applying for jobs. And men who are in their 40s and 50s, in particular, are willing to put themselves out there and apply for work that they aren’t entirely qualified for because they don’t have the same level of fear towards failure as women do. In fact, men tend to feel that, if they can get an interview, they’ll use it to prove why they’re confident in their abilities to get the job done, despite the qualifications in the job descriptions, which they view merely as suggestions rather than solid requirements.

Another big difference, however, is that women are usually more likely than men to simply follow the rules. So many women will follow the guidelines and not apply for a job that they’re not 100% qualified for. On the other hand, roughly 8% of men felt this way when applying to jobs.