Fit is a crucial (and often overlooked) aspect to landing jobs

A critical mistake that people make when applying for jobs is underestimating how important personal fit is. This is the extent to which your experience, qualifications, and preferences match the role you’re applying for. At best, this leads to wasted effort on applications that have zero chance of success—effort that could instead be spent on better things, like tailoring relevant applications, developing desirable skills, and networking. At worst, this leads strong candidates to get rejected from roles that they could have been great at.

This article dives into this issue to clarify what job fit is, why it's important, and what you can do about it in practice.

Why fit matters

Generally, when someone is looking to hire people for a job, they're looking to fill a specific need that they have, whether that means running operations, handling communications, doing fundraising, or something else. On top of that, they're looking for someone who can do that for them in particular, given any constraints that they might have, from work location to team size.

This means that getting hired isn't about how great you are, professionally or personally. It's about how great of a fit you can show that you are for a particular role, at a particular organization, at a particular time.

To illustrate this, imagine you were trying to hire an entry-level operations person who could support basic daily tasks in your startup. Who would you rather hire: a recent graduate who did well on a 3-month operations internship at a similar startup, or a director with 20 years of experience leading teams at large corporations?

On the one hand, the director is clearly more experienced and impressive. On the other hand, they're clearly the weaker candidate–they're just a much worse fit for this particular role. Their application raises so many open questions: Would they really want to do basic hands-on work? Would they be good at it? Why are they applying for this role in the first place? Will they leave quickly? Will they want a salary that's much higher than budgeted for this position?

In other words, hiring managers are trying to solve a puzzle by finding the right piece to complete their team. The question, then, is whether you're the right piece they need. If they have a specific gap to fill, you need to show that you'll slot in where they need you–not just that you could fit into lots of other organizations’ gaps.

When fit matters

It's most important to clearly demonstrate fit at the application stage, when hiring managers often have to filter through hundreds of applications, many of which are irrelevant. At that point, you need to convey why they should advance you to the next stage, which they'll only do if they can quickly figure out in what ways you're a good fit for the role.

That said, fit is important at all stages of the hiring process, especially given how competitive some roles are and how risk-averse the hiring process can be (many hiring managers would rather not hire anyone than hire someone who's a bad fit). In practice, interviewers will often test for fit through both explicit questions and in indirect ways, like seeing how you conduct yourself during the interview. Work tests are less likely to involve questions around fit, but the way you communicate and perform tasks could still influence people's perception of your fit for the role.

What you should do about fit in practice

Given how important fit is, there are several things you should do about it in practice as you’re applying for roles.

Be proactive about demonstrating fit

Make it clear to those you engage with that you’re a good fit for the role you’re applying for, in three main senses:

• Aptitude- You have the skills and traits necessary to do a great job at the role (or the ability to learn what you need to within a reasonable timeframe).
• Culture- You'd be a great fit for the culture of the team/organization where you'd be doing the work.
• Excitement- You're excited about working in this particular role, and at this particular team/organization.

If you want, you can remember this as the ACE approach. Keeping these considerations in mind will help you throughout the hiring process, and they’re something you should look to convey both explicitly, through what you say, and implicitly, through how you say it.

Consider the hiring manager's perspective

Hiring managers are in a strange position. They’re looking to make a pretty important decision quickly and with little information. Because of this, they’re looking for “safe bets”–people that they’re confident will meet the role’s needs. They also don’t know you yet–it’s up to you to demonstrate why you’re a safe bet, not leaving them to read between the lines.

This is most important at the application stage, where it means you should make it clear to someone who's skimming your materials why you could be a good fit. As a heuristic, you can assume you’ll need to grab their attention within 5 seconds, get them to consider you seriously within 30 seconds, and convince them to advance you to the next stage in around 2 minutes.

This is also relevant at the interview stage. There, it means you have to use the limited time you have to convey that you’re a good fit for the role, mainly through your responses to the interviewers’ questions. Another thing that could help with this is to think of questions you could ask the interviewer yourself, to show that you’re genuinely interested in the role and that you get what it’s all about.

Beyond that, it's worth evaluating your application and likely interview responses by looking at them with a critical eye and asking, "What could make a hiring manager worry about my fit?". Then, either change your responses to alleviate these concerns, or have some responses prepared in case you're asked about these concerns in an interview. 

Generally, though, if something is really likely to be an issue, then it's better to address it upfront, especially at the application stage, since you might not get a chance to address it otherwise.

Make sure to tell your story

Your story is the (perceived) narrative about your background that makes it clear where you are career-wise, how you got there, and how it makes you a great fit for the current role.

Sometimes, this story is really obvious. If you're a researcher and have experience in the same type of field, organization, and role as what you're currently applying for, then it's easy to see how you're a good fit, and there’s not much you need to say about it.

In many cases, though, at least some parts of your story won't be clear to hiring managers, unless you actively clarify them yourself. For example, if you’re making a career transition across fields, organization types, or roles–or a combination of these–then you’d probably want to explain it directly. You could then edit your cover letter or resume summary paragraph to succinctly explain why you’re making the transition, and how your unique (yet relevant!) perspective could help you excel at the role. You might also acknowledge any gaps in your knowledge, and say that you’re excited to learn what you need to, while sharing examples of ways you’ve learned similar things in the past.

Avoid common pitfalls

There are several common mistakes you should make sure to avoid.

Not acknowledging obvious concerns

If you’re applying for a competitive role and there’s something that’s clearly going to be seen as a red flag in terms of fit, it’s better to address it proactively than hope hiring managers won’t notice it. Odds are that they will, and your application will just get rejected without giving you a chance to address their concerns.

Conveying fit at too shallow a level

Fit isn’t just about hitting one or two high-level keywords. If someone is looking for a hands-on communications person and you focus on how much experience you have as a senior communications leader, it's not enough to just broadly hit the relevant keywords—you have to show how you’d be a fit for what they’re actually looking for.

Focusing on how great you are in general

As we saw above, fit isn’t about how great you are; it’s about how great you are for this role. For example, a PhD is usually seen as an impressive accomplishment. But if you emphasize it in an application where it’s irrelevant, then it draws attention away from more relevant parts of your background, and implies that you don’t understand what the role is about.

Essentially, anything that doesn't clearly relate as part of your story to your fit for a particular role is irrelevant and should be left out or minimized. That said, there’s some flexibility about this, as long as you can weave things well into your story. Going back to the previous example, even if a PhD is irrelevant to the type of work you’d be doing, it could still be relevant if you can use it to demonstrate your ability to work autonomously at a high level.

Not expressing excitement or being vague about it

It's worth explicitly saying that you're excited about this opportunity, and why. Try to get specific, whether it’s about the work, the role, or the organization, beyond just saying "I'm excited about this!"; if the expression of excitement could be repeated as-is for most other positions you’re applying for, then it probably won’t be very convincing. It’s important that this is sincere–if you’re not genuinely excited about the role, this likely indicates you’d be better off considering other roles.

Ignoring practical constraints

It's also important to make sure you're a good fit in terms of any practical constraints, like timezone and country work authorization. If there's a hard requirement that you don't fulfill, don't apply–you’ll be wasting your time. If there's a softer requirement that you don’t clearly meet, explicitly address it. For example, if they're looking for people able to work US East Coast hours and you're in the UK, mention that you’re willing to work those hours (if you are), and ideally also show that you've been able to work those kinds of hours in the past.

Keyword stuffing

Your resume and cover letter should include some relevant keywords from the job description to help make it clear at a glance how you’re a good fit for the role. But, even if you’re tailoring these materials for the role, you should still do it in a genuine way. If your resume is stuffed with tons of keywords from the job description, this can be a red flag to recruiters, especially if those keywords aren’t really relevant to your background. Include keywords in a natural way, by focusing on the most important ones that best tie in to your background, and including them only where appropriate.

Be strategic about application decisions

Fit also matters when deciding whether to apply for roles in the first place. If you can't make a convincing case for why you're a good fit, then it might be better to spend your time on something else, like putting more effort into an application where you are a good fit, or making yourself a stronger candidate in general by upskilling or networking.

There are always costs to spending your time on an application, and sometimes the smartest option is to not apply in the first place. The main question is: Does applying to this seem like the best use of your time, compared to other things you could be doing? Keep in mind that a bad application probably has no chance of success, so it's a waste of time rather than a numbers game, since you're going to get the same result whether you apply once or a thousand times.

To be clear: it's fine to be ambitious with your applications, even if you’re unsure about fit. But, you should also be reflective about your process and evaluate it over time, to make sure you're spending your time wisely. You can decide to do this after 30 applications, or 50 hours of work, or whatever cutoff makes sense for you. 

For example, if after 30 applications you see that you're regularly making it past the application stage but then get rejected at the work test stage, then you’re probably doing a good job conveying fit, and need to focus on your work test performances instead. And if, on the other hand, you never make it past the application stage, then you might want to change your application materials, apply to different kinds of roles, or work on making yourself a stronger candidate in the first place.

Essentially, it helps to think like a scientist as you apply for roles, and continually update your perspective based on the data you’re getting. It's perfectly fine to aim high, as long as you're adapting based on the results. Job searching is a competitive and “noisy” process, so it might take you lots of applications to land a role, even if you do everything right. What matters is that you see how far you get each time you apply, and then adjust accordingly.

Remember that fit is a two-way street

So far, we’ve only talked about how well you’ll fit into a role. But, you should also consider how well each role would fit you. When applying, remember to ask yourself questions like: Would you even enjoy the work? Would you have opportunities to grow? Would you be able to make a meaningful difference? All of these are worth considering when deciding whether to apply to roles and whether to accept offers once you get them.

Next steps

At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what fit is and why it matters for hiring decisions. To put what you've learned into practice, look at some of your current applications and ask yourself whether you're conveying personal fit properly. If not, what could you do better? If you're not currently applying, you can search our job board for relevant roles, and then consider how you could convey your fit for them based on what you learned here.

You can also try to get feedback on your applications–and possibly your interview responses too–from people who have experience with hiring and whose opinion you trust. Another helpful process is to run your application materials along with the job description through an LLM, and ask it to evaluate how well you’re currently conveying your fit for the role, and what you could do to convey it better.

Overall, low perceived fit is one of the main reasons why great candidates get rejected from roles they apply for. Fortunately, it’s an issue that you can do something about–as long as you’re deliberate and strategic about your approach.