What is the 70 rule of hiring?
The 70 rule of hiring is a recruiting principle that states a candidate who meets roughly 70% of a role’s stated requirements is worth hiring, provided they demonstrate the capacity and motivation to develop the remaining 30% on the job. It is a deliberate departure from the pursuit of the perfect candidate, which research and industry experience consistently show to be a costly and often futile exercise. The sections below unpack how the rule works in practice, where it applies, and how hiring managers can use it to make smarter, faster decisions.
How does the 70 rule actually work in hiring decisions?
The 70 rule works by shifting the hiring threshold from full qualification to demonstrated potential. Rather than screening out candidates who do not tick every box, hiring managers evaluate whether a candidate satisfies the core requirements of a role and shows clear evidence of being able to close the gap within a reasonable timeframe, typically three to six months.
In practice, this means the hiring process becomes a two-part assessment. The first part confirms that a candidate meets the non-negotiable requirements: the technical skills, experience level, and competencies without which the role cannot be performed. The second part evaluates growth indicators such as learning agility, relevant adjacent skills, and cultural alignment. A candidate who scores strongly on both dimensions clears the 70% bar, even if their CV does not match the job description line by line.
The rule also functions as a check against over-engineered job specifications. When every requirement on a job description carries equal weight, hiring teams can easily eliminate strong candidates over minor gaps. The 70 rule forces a more deliberate conversation about what the role actually requires versus what would simply be convenient.
Why do companies hire candidates who aren’t fully qualified?
Companies hire candidates who are not fully qualified because waiting for a perfect match is often more expensive than developing talent internally. Roles left open for extended periods create productivity losses, increase pressure on existing teams, and can delay critical business outcomes. A candidate who is 70% qualified and highly motivated frequently outperforms a 100% qualified candidate who is disengaged or a poor cultural fit.
There is also a structural reason. In specialist and niche sectors, the supply of fully qualified candidates is genuinely limited. Organisations operating in fields such as engineering, IT infrastructure, or financial compliance regularly face talent shortages where waiting for a perfect hire is not a realistic option. Hiring at 70% and investing in structured onboarding and development is a pragmatic response to market conditions, not a compromise in standards.
Finally, internal development has measurable retention benefits. Employees who are hired with a development trajectory tend to stay longer because they have a visible path forward. A candidate who joins already ticking every box has less room to grow within the role, which can accelerate disengagement.
What’s the difference between must-have and nice-to-have requirements?
Must-have requirements are the competencies and qualifications without which a candidate cannot perform the core functions of the role. Nice-to-have requirements are additional attributes that would add value but are not essential to day-one performance. The 70 rule depends entirely on making this distinction clearly before the hiring process begins.
Must-haves are typically defined by three criteria: the skill is used regularly in the role, it cannot be taught quickly on the job, and its absence would directly impair performance or create compliance risk. For example, fluency in a specific programming language for a software development role, or a legal qualification for a compliance position, would typically be must-haves.
Nice-to-haves, by contrast, are skills that expand a candidate’s effectiveness but can be acquired through training, mentoring, or experience. Familiarity with a secondary software tool, experience in a specific sub-sector, or exposure to a particular methodology are common examples. When hiring managers fail to separate these two categories before screening, they routinely disqualify strong candidates over gaps that could be closed within weeks.
Does the 70 rule apply to all roles and industries?
The 70 rule does not apply uniformly across all roles and industries. It works well for roles where skills are learnable on the job and where organisations have the capacity to support development. It is less appropriate for highly regulated, safety-critical, or technically specialised positions where full qualification is a legal or operational requirement from day one.
In sectors such as aviation, healthcare, nuclear engineering, or financial regulation, regulatory frameworks often mandate specific credentials before a candidate can perform core duties. In these contexts, the 70 rule is not a viable approach, and hiring below the required qualification threshold carries legal and reputational risk.
For most commercial roles in sectors such as sales, marketing, logistics, customer service, HR, and general management, the 70 rule is both applicable and effective. Senior leadership positions present a more nuanced picture. Executive hires require a higher threshold of demonstrated capability given the scope of their impact, though even at this level, potential and strategic fit carry significant weight alongside prior experience.
How do hiring managers assess the missing 30%?
Hiring managers assess the missing 30% by evaluating a candidate’s learning trajectory, adjacent experience, and self-awareness about their development gaps. The goal is not to ignore what is missing but to determine whether the candidate has the capacity and drive to acquire it within the organisation’s timeframe and with the support available.
Structured competency interviews are the most reliable tool here. Questions that ask candidates to describe how they have learned new skills under pressure, adapted to unfamiliar environments, or taken initiative outside their defined role provide concrete evidence of learning agility. Abstract claims about being a fast learner carry little weight without specific examples.
Practical assessments and work samples can also surface capability that a CV does not capture. A candidate who has not used a specific platform but completes a relevant task accurately and efficiently is demonstrating transferable competence. Hiring managers who rely solely on CV screening will miss this entirely.
Finally, reference checks focused on development and growth, rather than just performance confirmation, can reveal whether a candidate has consistently closed skill gaps in previous roles. This is often the most underused source of evidence in the hiring process.
When should a company raise or lower the 70% threshold?
A company should raise the threshold when the cost or risk of a development gap is high, and lower it when the talent market is tight and internal development capacity is strong. The 70% figure is a starting point, not a fixed rule, and the right threshold varies depending on role criticality, onboarding infrastructure, and market conditions.
Raise the threshold when a role is immediately client-facing with no ramp-up period, when the team has no bandwidth to support a new hire’s development, or when the position carries regulatory accountability. In these scenarios, hiring below 80 to 85% qualification introduces operational risk that outweighs the benefits of a wider candidate pool.
Lower the threshold when the talent supply for a role is demonstrably scarce, when the organisation has strong structured onboarding in place, or when the role is designed to grow over time. Early-career and mid-level positions are natural candidates for a lower threshold, as is any role where cultural alignment and motivation are stronger predictors of success than prior experience.
Organisations expanding into new markets or hiring across borders face an additional layer of complexity. When building a team in a new geography, the combination of talent scarcity and unfamiliar employment frameworks can make it difficult to assess qualification equivalence accurately. In these situations, working with an experienced employer of record partner helps ensure that hiring decisions are made within the correct legal and compliance framework, regardless of where the threshold is set.
The 70 rule is ultimately a discipline in prioritisation. The organisations that apply it most effectively are those that have done the work upfront to define what a role truly requires, built the internal capacity to support development, and accepted that a motivated candidate with 70% of the skills today is often a stronger long-term investment than a fully qualified candidate who has stopped growing. Blue Lynx has supported businesses across the Netherlands and Europe in making exactly these kinds of hiring decisions for over 35 years.