> It’s hard for me to fathom that such a large proportion of candidates are terrible. It’s not that most candidates are terrible, it’s that most job applicatio

> It’s hard for me to fathom that such a large proportion of candidates are terrible. It’s not that most candidates are terrible, it’s that most job applications are 90% mismatched. Don’t forget many many people are applying to multiple jobs, and most of them are great candidates for something, just maybe not the high paying lead role as the first job out of college. As someone who’s done a lot of hiring and mentoring, I often tell people to apply lots of places and punch above your weight class, a little, for some of it. This is just like applying for college - you put in the app to Harvard on the wild off chance you’ll get in, you put in the app to your state school so you have a safety, then you apply for a range of schools, half of them long shots. Turns out, Harvard rejects more than 90% of their applications... because they get a lot of them, and most of them are long shots. This does mean they have some filters in place, for better or worse. I see this same advice play out among applicants - many of them are applying for jobs that they might have only half or a third of the qualifications for. But maybe that’s okay, especially for junior positions. Many companies hire people who don’t have 100% of the listed qualifications, so as an applicant, it might be worth checking if you pass their filter, and as a hiring manager, it might be worth learning how to avoid interviewing people who are obviously more hopeful than qualified.