Have you heard the stat about women only applying to jobs when they meet nearly all of the requirements?
It shows up in workshops on confidence, leadership development, career planning… Pick a topic and at some point someone will mention it.
The exact numbers change depending on who tells the story. But the basic claim is always the same: men apply when they meet some of the criteria, while women tend to apply only when they meet almost all of them.
Whether or not the statistics themselves hold up under scrutiny, the story keeps circulating because it captures something people recognize. Many women hesitate to apply unless they feel fully qualified. Many men apply earlier, even when they meet fewer of the listed requirements.
And the message usually delivered alongside the stat is simple: women should be more confident.
But if you stop and think about it for a second, the whole thing raises a different question.
What exactly do we mean by “requirements”?
Because if people are getting hired without meeting every item on the list, then the list was never functioning as a locked gate in the first place."
Because if people are getting hired without meeting every item on the list, then the list was never functioning as a locked gate in the first place.
Job descriptions often pretend to be rules. But in practice, they behave more like suggestions, or guidelines. Think about it.
There are some things that are fixed. Licenses. Work authorization. Compliance. Everything else is often more flexible than the posting makes it seem.
Even things that look precise, like years of experience, are usually standing in for something harder to describe. The number itself isn’t the point. What employers are really trying to signal is a level of judgment, exposure, or responsibility that they hope comes with time.
When women read job descriptions literally, they are not being cautious as much as they are being rational in a system that pretends to run on rules while actually running on signals.
When women read job descriptions literally, they are not being cautious as much as they are being rational in a system that pretends to run on rules while actually running on signals."
And when men apply anyway, they are not being reckless or even arrogant. They are reading the real system more accurately.
What this really exposes is not a confidence gap. It’s a language gap.
The statistic itself probably doesn’t need to be retired. But the interpretation that usually follows it might. Instead of letting the takeaway be that women simply need to be bolder, we could treat this “requirements misinterpretation” as a teaching moment about how work actually works. The real lesson is not “Be more confident.” It’s that you are interpreting the system literally when it is speaking figuratively.
Which leads to “Why are we still pretending this system runs on requirements alone when we could be teaching people to navigate signals?”
Job descriptions tell you what an organization is willing to say out loud. They tell you the type of person that they can imagine being successful in a role. They often provide clues about the experiences people in similar roles tend to have. The actual hiring decisions are often judgement calls, though, not a set of boxes ticked.
Once you start looking at job descriptions this way, they stop reading like checklists and start looking more like clues about the problem someone inside the organization is trying to solve. This shifts an applicant from focusing on “do-I-or-don’t-I meet the required qualifications” to “here’s what I understood about what you need and this is why I’m the right person for the job.”
If you can do that, you’re already two steps ahead of other candidates.
You stopped reading the list and started reading the room.
This is the second piece in the Forté Signals series exploring how careers actually move inside modern organizations.
