Job applications vs Job requirements

[Sample00]

Not sure if I am going to word this properly but I am curious to know what your thoughts are on this topic.

Lets say a position becomes available in a company that has 20 offices. The position is for that of Branch Manager. The hierarchy in the office is Branch Manager, 2 - Assistant Branch Managers and then support staff.

The requirements are this:
You must have a University Degree coupled with a number of years of experience in the field, not necessarily in the available position. And the would be qualified individual must have started or completed a graduate degree.

My question is: If you were a member of the support staff, what would be your train of thought in applying for the Branch Manager's position if you:

a) have not held a position like or similar to that before
b) you have not started a graduate degree program
c) you know that one of the other individuals applying for the position has both a graduate degree and is the Assistant Branch Manager at that time.

Secondly,
if you were the current Vice President of said company, what would make you consider the support staff member for the position.

I know, vague and maybe transparent but I am just looking for some discussion on this.

Fire away with any questions and I will try to answer them.

[CaptainCrunch]

Thats tough, looking at the requirements vs what you have, you'd be a C candidate for the role.

Lacking the pre-requisite educational or hard requirements, and lacking the type of experience that they're looking for.

What you're missing in the story is the skills requirements. What skills does the job require, and how does your skill set match up.

You also have to think about how many people are going to apply for the job. Based on that you can comfortably assume that they're going to filter the applications down to the top 3 to 5 candidates and only interview those.

So where do you fit.

In order to get past that filter, you'd have to come up with a pretty amazing application, where instead of just listing your stuff, you specifically try to link your skills and experiences to the job requirements to make it seem like even though you're missing key components, you are a solid consideration for the role.

But its tough, because the first filter is how does the Candidates CV or resume match up to the hard requirements.

[Sample00]

CC^^^

the support staff member has not had Managerial experience before. No experience in HR, Budgeting, Management, but they have had experience in dealing with prospective clients on a regular basis.

sorry should add one thing..the support staff member has been involved in a Leadership program with the Vice-President. This program is designed to assist support staff members in moving up the corporate ladder.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Sample00

CC^^^

the support staff member has not had Managerial experience before. No experience in HR, Budgeting, Management, but they have had experience in dealing with prospective clients on a regular basis.

Thats the trouble Sample, the customer facing eliment is important, if you break down the perspective job on the above, and grade all of the above skills out of a total of 100 how important is the customer service element

eg

HR 20
Budgeting 30
Management 35
Customer service 15


If your excellent at customer service like lets say a 12, then realistically you're a 12 out of 100 and you'll probably be filtered.

If you have previous experiences in the other areas you can bring in up in a custom CV.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, but to be honest as part of my new role I had to learn the recruiting side of the business, and because we get flooded with applications I have to be able to grid people's resume's in a hurry and in order to do that you have to look at skills versus requirements, then experience, and then you use the fuzzy logic stuff to seperate out the top 10.

Have you talked to you're manager about career pathing with a focus of getting into branch management?

[CaptainCrunch]

Missed the last part, about the leadership course, it would have an impact, but I doubt that it would make up for the missing requirements on the graduate program stuff, and the missing HR and Budget skills requirements.

[valo403]

I always take the requirements with a grain of salt, particularly where they don't have an obvious tie to the ability to perfrom the job. If a requirement is 'must have x class license' that's a pretty firm point, but something like 'must have started or completed a graduate program' doesn't really seem like a requirement but rather more of a preference. If your skills are more applicable than someone who has a graduate degree you'd likely be the preferred hire (although some places seem to hire strictly on things like degrees, regardless of the applicability). I have a graduate degree, but my skills almost certainly don't apply to a position involving budgeting or HR. That said, if there are people that meet all the requirements and you're lacking some of them it's likely to be a tough road.

[bizaro86]

It seems like it might make more sense for that person to apply for an assistant branch manager role, especially if it's likely one would open up as a result of on of the A.M.s moving up a spot.

[Sample00]

great feedback and thanks everyone. please keep it coming.

just so you know, I am in no way involved in this. Just an outsider looking in. I have no vested interest in the position from either stand point.

bizaro86, thats what would make sense to me. I always thought one needed to learn to walk before they ran. And jumping up into an A.M. role would be a natural progression for a support staff member.

[freedogger]

It depends on the company of course, but often It seems very tough to get promoted internally. Mgt. seems to type-cast people and it is easier for external applicants with the exact same skill set/experience. I guess they can stretch the truth too and it is harder for the employer to verify what they say vs an internal applicant.

Another tip, get a buddy who is over-qualified to apply & interview with them. Have him/her give some lame excuse they get an offer. Their job is to prep you for the interview. This works better for external applicants though.

On a more positive note, often they will just pick the best candidate that applies. Can you forsee any risks?

[Rob Brown]

If the Support employee has no experience running people what makes them so qualified to leap over the ARM and become a regional manager???

To me, experience as a team lead or managing people in the past (in current industry) would be very very worthwhile. If the employee has none of that, AND has none of the training... it would be very difficult for them to compete for the job.

[Sample00]

Originally Posted by Rob Brown

If the Support employee has no experience running people what makes them so qualified to leap over the ARM and become a regional manager???

.

this is the part that I am trying to figure it out as well.

why would somebody apply for a position that they have no experience in being able to do. I don't get that. Isn't that setting yourself up for failure?

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Sample00

why would somebody apply for a position that they have no experience in being able to do. I don't get that. Isn't that setting yourself up for failure?

Maybe they're trying to make themselves the presumptive candidate for a soon-to-be-open assistant manager's role? People apply for jobs they're not qualified for internally for reasons other than they expect to get it.

It could be the person is just using it to signal to upper management that they're interested in taking a managerial career path. They may not expect to get the role, but would get some upper-management mind share and some interview practice if they get interviewed for it.

[maverickstruth]

Said individual could be applying, knowing full well they don't have the qualifications and as such, don't have a "real shot" for three reasons that I can think of off the top of my head:

1) To express an interest in moving up. It's a way of saying "I'm serious about my career progression, and even if I'm not qualified on paper, give me a shot to tell you about all the great things I've done that you may not even know about -- I might just change your mind."

2) In some organizations, if a position is filled leaving another one vacant, they will hire from the previous interview pool into the newly vacated position without reposting. Don't know if that's a consideration here or not.

3) To practice interviewing, and to see what sorts of interview questions are asked. Especially with situational/behavioural interview questions, it's a great way to identify gaps in your experience, and to then be able to go and fill those gaps.

I actually recently applied for a position in a similar situation on the recommendation of my mentor -- who happens to be the director of the department into which I was applying (though not the hiring manager, so no conflict-of-interest). Those 3 reasons were among those that he gave me -- reasons to apply, despite the fact that I didn't have the exact experience they were looking for.

On the other hand, they could just be doing it because they can. Some people do boggle the mind, sometimes ;-)

[Rathji]

I always take job requirements with a grain of salt, especially with the qualifications creep that we have experienced in the last 20-30 years due to more and more people getting advanced education. The same job requires the same skills (roughly) as it did 30 years ago, but whereas a college diploma might have been enough back then now you need a graduate degree and 10 years experience. Not because the job is that much harder, but because the people around have that much more in terms of 'qualifications' to throw at it, even if many of them dont really matter.

For me, if I was interviewing people for that position, I would take my understanding of the real requirements of the job into account, and use those requirements to filter out people. As was previously mentioned, the Grad School requirement seems very flexible, and likely exists entirely due to qualifications creep.

That said, the person is involved in some sort of leadership training within the company, so someone must see something in them to put resources towards that end. I wouldn't be surprised if this candidate got more consideration than their qualifications (as you indicated) would deem appropriate.

[WilsonFourTwo]

Just trying to get a complete picture here........does the applicant have a nice rack?

[Sample00]

Originally Posted by WilsonFourTwo

Just trying to get a complete picture here........does the applicant have a nice rack?

a deer rack maybe!

[habernac]

Some job applicants like the experience of the interview process as well. They treat it as a learning experience (and I've seen some HORRIBLE job interviews in my time).

[V]

The way my hiring has been going, if you have even the slightest bit of relevant experience you're probably beating out about 95% of the applicants. It's ridiculous what people apply for these days.

[Sample00]

thanks for your input. I appreciate it very much.

Does the applicant have previous experience maybe in another company that may trump the experience of the Assistant Branch manager?