Every month on our site, Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc., will answer your career and leadership questions. Please send your question to advice@anitaborg.org and it may be answered in an upcoming column. This month, Jerri Barrett, VP of Marketing, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, is our guest columnist.

Question: I am facing a career dilemma. I have taken some time off to raise a family, and I’ve gone back and completed my Masters in Computer Science. I am not confident of my programming skills, so I applied for a QA Testing position. The company asked if I would interview for a Software Engineer position instead. I did not want to lose the opportunity, so I said “yes.” I’m worried that I don’t have the skills for the job. Should I offer to get additional certifications/training or negotiate for a lower pay with an appraisal after six months?

Answer:

First of all, there must be something in your resume that is telling the company that you are qualified for the position of Software Engineer. Remember that a job description is like the dream of who will take that job—the people who actually get the position rarely match up to that dream. So the skills you have are probably a good match. As open job requisitions are hard to come by in many companies, a hiring manager would not bring in a candidate unless they saw something in their resume that makes them think they are right for the position. Remember that it is critical to display confidence in your skills and knowledge in an interview. Never put yourself down in an interview. I once interviewed someone who told me they weren’t that great in math. Which would have been fine except they were applying for an accounting position.

Never negotiate for a lower salary—it is a sign of desperation, and you may put yourself into a hole with the company that you never climb out of. It is important to wait to see what their real expectations for the position are and what they salary and benefits they are offering. If you are not a good fit for the position they won’t offer it to you; if you are, they will. Do try and negotiate for more.

In Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, authors Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever reveal some startling statistics on women in job negotiations. “Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.”  The impact of not negotiating is substantial, “By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.”

My concern is that somehow you are creating barriers to success where there are none. Realize that you are an accomplished person and this company is interested in you. Take that as a validation that you are great at what you do. You have a masters in CS—they don’t give out a masters degree, or really any kind of degree, if you can’t do the work.

Jerri Barrett is the Vice President of Marketing for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. For the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing she runs our Resume Workshop and helps create content around careers. You can email Jerri at jerrib@anitaborg.org.