The 6 Most Common Pieces Of Job Advice You Should Definitely Ignore

Everyone has opinions about how to get a good job and keep one, and it’s hard to figure out which pointers are actually helpful to follow.

What your well-meaning uncle, professor or manager says you need to do for your next job move may actually be disastrous to follow. To be savvy, you need to learn how to weed out the kernels of good career tips from the bad.

To help professionals avoid these mistakes, we asked career experts to share the worst, most common pieces of job advice you’re going to hear a lot in your life. Read on to learn why these boilerplate outlooks can hold you back and what alternative advice you should follow instead.

1. Only apply for jobs that you meet all the qualifications for.

This is bad advice because job descriptions are not necessarily realistic and are often written as a “wish list” from the employer’s point of view, said Cynthia Pong, founder of Embrace Change, a career coaching and consulting firm.

“Many people, especially women of color, people of color, women in general and others from underrepresented backgrounds or with non-traditional career paths, may self-select out of applying because they don’t meet all the criteria listed,” she said.

Just because a job listing states a desired education requirement does not mean you actually need it. For example, in 2017, Accenture, Grads of Life and Harvard Business School conducted an analysis of 26 million job postings and 600 business and HR executive surveys. They found that 67% of the job postings required at least a bachelor’s degree, yet only 16% of employees who were already in those jobs held that degree. The findings are a reminder that many jobs do not require a college degree to succeed, despite what companies advertise.

Instead