Should you apply if you don’t meet all the requirements?

Some lines in a post are checked before anyone reads your work, often by a form or a spreadsheet. If you don’t meet one of these, that post is not worth your time:

• Batch year or graduation year: “2025 and 2026 batch only” means those years. If yours isn’t listed, move on.
• A degree the job needs by rule: a CA for an audit role, an LLB for a legal one, a B.Ed for many school teaching jobs. “B.Tech preferred” on a startup post is much softer.
• Location and work mode, when the post says onsite in one city and you can’t move there. “Remote, India only” means India only.
• The right to work in that country. A role abroad that says it can’t sponsor a visa means it.
• A stated CGPA or percentage cut-off in a campus or mass hiring drive, such as “60% or 6 CGPA throughout, no active backlogs”.
• A joining date, when the post says “immediate joiners only” and your notice period is three months.
• A language the job is done in, for customer-facing roles.

Other lines describe the person they hope for. Posts often list more than one person has, and the people who get hired rarely tick every line:

• Years of experience. “2 to 4 years” is a range they hope for. A fresher with one strong project, or someone with a year of real work, often gets read.
• Long skill lists. A post that names ten tools usually needs three of them on day one. Look for the words “must”, “required” or “you have”, and treat the rest as good to have.
• Anything marked “preferred”, “bonus” or “nice to have”.
• A tool next to one you know: Tableau when you know Power BI, GCP when you know AWS, Vue when you know React. The idea carries over, and you can say so.
• Soft skills: “team player”, “strong communication”. Everyone lists them; your email shows them.

A simple test. Apply when all three are true:

• You meet every firm cut-off above.
• You have done the main thing the job is about: the work in its title and its first few lines.
• You are within about two years of the experience it asks for.

It is too far when:

• The post asks for 5+ years in a senior role and you are a fresher.
• You have never done the core skill. A data analyst post built around SQL needs someone who has written SQL.
• It is a different kind of role from your work, with nothing in your record that carries over.

Being well over the range is a gap too. Someone with eight years applying to a “0 to 2 years” role should say in a line why they want this level, so the reader doesn’t have to guess.

• In campus placements and mass hiring drives, cut-offs are usually firm and checked in a form.
• A founder or hiring manager posting a single opening rarely states one. If they do and you are a little below, write anyway and lead with your work.
• Never round up or change the number. If they ask for it, give the real one.
• If a post asks for a percentage and your university gives a CGPA, use your university’s own conversion: it is usually printed on the marksheet or on the university’s website.
• If a post doesn’t ask for CGPA and yours isn’t a strength, you don’t have to lead with it. Leaving something out is fine; changing it is not.

Five minutes with the post answers it:

1. 1

   Mark the firm cut-offs

   Batch, degree, place, right to work, a stated CGPA. Do you meet each one?
2. 2

   Find what the job is mostly about

   The title, the first lines of the post, and whatever it repeats. Usually two or three things.
3. 3

   Point to one thing you did for each

   A project, an internship task, a feature you shipped, a report you made. With a link if there is one.
4. 4

   Count the gaps

   One or two tools you haven’t used is normal. The core skill missing is not.
5. 5

   Write why you fit in two sentences

   The main thing the job needs, and the work that shows you have done it. That is the middle of your email.

If the gap is obvious from your resume, say it once, plainly, next to what you have instead. Don’t apologise and don’t explain at length. Riya is a 2026 graduate writing about a post that asks for one to three years.

What the gap line does:

• It names the gap before the reader finds it, so it reads as honest rather than hidden.
• It sits next to the closest thing she has, with proof the reader can open.
• It is one sentence. The rest of the email is about the work.

More on the whole email: how to cold email for a job, and the cold email guides by role. To make the resume lead with your closest work, see how to tailor your resume to a job description, and never close a gap by inventing it: why fake experience on a resume backfires.

Jobreach checks every opening against your own rules and your record, in code, and keeps near misses with the gap written out instead of hiding them:

• Ruled out: a place or work mode you didn’t choose, internship or full time, a batch-year limit (batch years are exact), a company type or company you skip, a company you already wrote to, stated pay below your floor, unpaid roles if you drop them, and posts past the freshness limit.
• Experience: up to 2 years short of the minimum is a gap, not a no. More than 2 years short, or more than 3 years past the maximum, rules it out.
• Pay up to 10% under your floor, and a CGPA up to 0.2 under a cut-off, are kept with a note. A post that states no pay is never dropped for pay.
• Strong match: a score of 70 or more out of 100, your work showing at least 70% of the skills asked for, at most three missing, your years in range, and one of your target kinds of role.
• Good match: 50 or more, with at most four asked-for skills missing. Everything else that passes your rules is Worth a look, with gaps.
• Each opening lists its gaps in words, such as “Asks for Docker”.

If Jobreach rules out a post you still want, Prepare anyway prepares it the same careful way and shows what would have ruled it out. Freshers can read how Jobreach works for students and freshers.