Deciding where to apply
Should you apply when you don't meet every requirement?
Apply when you clear every gate and your graded misses add up to one or less, counting a partial as half and the center of the role twice. This guide shows how to sort each line of a posting and what to do above that.
Read each requirement as a gate, a grade, or a wish
Apply when you clear every gate and your graded misses add up to one or less, counting a partial as half and the center of the role twice; wishes never count against you. How many lines you meet matters less than which kind of line you are missing, because a posting mixes three kinds of requirement that behave differently.
- Gate: a yes-or-no condition that no wording or evidence can change. Work authorization, a license the job legally needs, a security clearance, an on-site location you cannot move to, a language you must work in. If you fail a gate, the posting is not for you right now, however strong the rest of your background is.
- Grade: a skill, tool, scope or amount of experience where partial credit exists. "Led a design system," "SQL," "managed a team." You can meet it fully, partly through adjacent work, or not at all, and a reader can weigh the partial case.
- Wish: something the posting itself calls preferred, a plus or nice to have. Missing a wish costs little, and you can leave it out of your application.
A common mistake is treating every line as a gate. Few lines are.
Wording that tells you how firm a line is
Postings rarely label their requirements as gate, grade or wish, but the wording and the placement usually give it away. Read for these signals before you count anything.
- A required skill is a grade, not a gate. It counts double only when it is the center of the role (see the rule below).
- Placement: requirements are often listed roughly in order of importance, so the first few lines tend to carry more weight than the last few. Often, not always.
- The day-to-day section: if a tool or skill is listed as required but nothing under "what you'll do" touches it, it may be a wish written as a must.
- Years of experience: usually a stand-in for scope and independence. Fewer years with the scope is a partial match. The right number of years in a different field is also a partial match.
- "Or equivalent experience": the posting is telling you the years or degree are flexible.
A worked example
Take an invented posting for a senior product designer in Toronto, with a candidate who has four years of product design, has led design on a B2B dashboard, and lives in Toronto. Sort every line before deciding anything.
The gate is met: the candidate lives where the role is based. Four of the six graded lines are met outright, and two are partial: four years against "5+," and mentoring one junior designer against "led a team." Two partials add up to one miss. Neither is the center of a hands-on product design role, so neither counts double. The two missing lines are both wishes, which do not count. Verdict: apply, and plan one sentence for the leadership gap (see the section on closing a gap).
Change one fact and the answer flips. If the posting said "on-site in Berlin, relocation not offered" and the candidate cannot move, a gate fails and the strength of everything else stops mattering. Stop there and spend the evening on another posting.
A decision rule you can apply in two minutes
- Check the gates first. Any gate you fail means stop. If the posting is silent or unclear on a gate, such as whether remote work is possible, check the careers page and the company's other postings first. Ask the recruiter only if there is a contact; otherwise apply and settle it on the first call.
- Score every graded line under the required heading. If the posting has no such heading, use the lines that say must, required or minimum. A met line costs 0, a partial costs half a miss, a missing line costs one miss. Add them up.
- Double the line that is the center of the role. If the line you miss or only partly meet is the thing the day-to-day section is mostly about, such as SQL for a data analyst, count it twice. A missing central skill then scores 2 and stops you.
- A total of 1 or less: apply. That is one missing line, or two partials. Adjacent experience earns credit, not full credit.
- A total above 1: stop, unless someone at the company can vouch for you. Otherwise skip, and spend the time on a better match.
- Ignore the wishes. They do not count for or against you.
This rule refines the strong, partial and stretch triage in the guide on how many jobs to apply to. The threshold is my judgment, not a measured one. Test it against your own replies and adjust it. If the gap comes up in an interview, the guide on interview questions about a missing requirement covers that part.
Close the gap on the page without hiding it or faking it
Once you decide to apply with a gap that matters, handle it in two places. In the example the biggest gap is leadership; the four years already show on the resume, so they need no mention.
On the resume, never add a skill you do not have to match a keyword. Move the adjacent evidence to the top of the relevant role instead, and describe it as what it was. Using the candidate above:
Mentored one junior designer for a year through weekly 1:1s.
Do not turn that into "Led a team of designers." The first line survives a follow-up question. The second does not.
In any free-text field, a cover letter or a "why you" box, spend one sentence naming the gap and the closest real evidence:
The posting asks for design leadership. I have not had direct reports; I mentored one junior designer for a year through weekly 1:1s.
On forms with yes-or-no or years questions, answer exactly what is asked. If a question asks for years of professional experience with a specific thing, count only the years you did that thing.
Check the rule against your own results
Any rule like this should be tested on you, because the right threshold depends on your field and level. Write down, for each application, the requirement you were missing. Do not draw conclusions from fewer than about five applications in a group; treat your first dozen as notes, not evidence.
If you track applications in Lamr, fit screening (1 credit) grades the posting's main requirements as met, partial or missing, weights each as critical, important or nice, and flags a hard blocker such as work authorization. Scores are comparable across applications. The Stats page then shows interview rate by fit-score band, but only once a group has at least five applications, and it calls out a difference only when it is unlikely to be chance. Lamr gives you a second, independent grading of the posting's main requirements (typically 6 to 8, not every line) to compare with your own sort. It does not use the gate, grade and wish labels, and the decision stays yours. Compare the lines Lamr marks critical and missing with your own gates and grades; any critical line you filed as a wish deserves a second look. See the tailoring page and the tracker page.
Quick answers
Is there a percentage of requirements I should meet before applying?
There is no defensible fixed number. The kind of line you are missing matters more than how many. A missing gate rules a posting out, while several missing wishes change almost nothing.
What if I am only short on years of experience?
Years usually stand in for scope. If you have done the work at the scale the role describes, you are a partial match and can apply. If you are short on both the years and the scope, count it as a miss.
Does a referral change the rule?
It can. A person who vouches for you gives the reader a reason to look past a gap, so a referral is what moves a posting with two misses from skip to apply. It does not change a failed gate.
Should I apply if the posting says 5+ years and I have 3?
Count it as a partial if you have owned the same scope the role describes, and as a miss if your scope was narrower. A single partial does not stop you from applying; a partial plus another miss usually does.
