Hello beautiful soul
I want to tell you something that still makes me shake my head when I think about it.
I had already GOT the job.
The offer was made. The contract was coming. I was going to be VP People at Onfido — a fast-moving, ambitious tech company — and they had chosen me. After a rigorous process, they had looked at everything I was and said: yes. Her.
And then I went and signed up for my CIPD.
For context — the CIPD is a professional HR qualification in the UK. Modules. Assessments. Written submissions. The kind of thing you'd do to get into the field, not when you've already been leading for the better part of fifteen years.
I enrolled after the offer. Not before. After.
I set my alarm an hour earlier every morning. I read the materials before anyone else was awake. I wrote the assignments alongside a full, demanding leadership role. I hustled, quietly and determinedly, because somewhere deep in the architecture of my mind, a voice kept whispering the same thing on repeat:
You're not quite enough yet. Just one more thing. Just make yourself a little more legitimate.
I want you to reeeeeeeeeally sit with that for a second.
Fifteen years of leading teams. Fifteen years of navigating complex organisations, of leading culture through growth, through chaos, through the moments that really test what a company is made of. Fifteen years of being the person in the room that people turned to when things got hard.
And I thought I needed a certificate.
Because some quiet, insidious part of me felt like I hadn't quite earned my seat at the table — even though the company had literally just handed me the chair.
Here's what the research tells us, and it will not surprise you even slightly.
Studies show that women carry the equivalent of up to one and a half years' extra education and nearly a full year's extra workforce experience beyond what their role actually requires. We are systematically over-investing in credentials. Not because we lack capability — but because we have learned, through years of absorbing the world's signals, that we need to jump higher hurdles than the men beside us.
Research from UC San Diego found that overqualified women and sufficiently qualified men tend to be hired for the same jobs and ranks — meaning women are routinely doing more to end up in the same place. We are not getting the same return on our investment. Not even close.
And then there's the application gap. Harvard research found that when job postings used vague language about requirements, just 6% of qualified women applied for the advanced role compared with 22% of qualified men. We are not even putting ourselves forward for the things we have already earned the right to pursue.
When we apply for roles where we meet 100% of the requirements, that actually means we are already overqualified.
Read that again.
If you are ticking every single box before you dare raise your hand — you are already beyond the role. And you're still hesitating.
As a coach I see this all the time. And I mean all the time.
I see it in the woman who has been doing the job of the person above her for two years but won't apply for the promotion because she hasn't officially held the title.
I see it in the woman who is the most experienced person in the conversation but still emails me to ask if she's "ready" before she applies.
I see it in the woman who just finished her second Masters — not because she needed it, not because she was passionate about the subject — but because she thought it would finally make her enough.
I see it in the woman who keeps adding things to her list. More training. More credentials. More proof. A never-ending accumulation of evidence that she is qualified to take up the space she has already, quietly, been filling for years.
And I see it in myself, at 5am on a weekday morning, doing HR coursework for a job I had already been given.
What I know now — what I wish I could whisper back to that woman setting her alarm in the dark — is this:
They didn't hire you for the CIPD honey. They hired you for you.
What Onfido needed from me wasn't another module completed or another qualification framed on a wall. They needed me to lead. To think with clarity under pressure. To build a people function that actually served the humans inside it. To hold the culture when everything else was moving fast.
And I had been doing versions of that my entire career.
The piece of paper was never going to give me what I needed. Because what I needed wasn't more qualification.
It was more trust in myself.
Somewhere along the way I quietly dropped even calling out that I had the CIPD. I don't even remember exactly when. What I do remember is the moment I looked up and realised: I didn't need any of it. I was already leading. I had always been leading. The only thing the qualification was ever really for was to silence a voice inside me that had no business being that loud.
And that voice? The one that tells you one more course, one more credential, one more proof point will finally make you enough?
That voice is not the truth.
It is what happens when a woman who has spent years watching the world set higher bars for people like her begins to set them for herself. Internalising standards that were never fair to begin with and then exceeding them. Alone. Quietly. Before sunrise.
You were already enough before you opened the registration page.
This is exactly the work we do inside Women Who Lead.
Not to add more to your CV — but to help you finally trust what's already there. To close the gap between who you are and who you're willing to let the world see. To lead from the whole of yourself not just the parts you think are credentialled enough to show up.
If you are curious, join me for a free session on burnout this week: Burnout is not the problem. Sign up here.
You've already done enough to deserve it.
Rooting for you always
Ruth x
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