[onion2k]

In my opinion most companies see their job adverts as a filters rather than nets. They're written as if the goal is to make sure "the wrong people" don't apply. That's why you see lots of criteria that a candidate has to match before they should apply - 'you must know X, Y, and Z' and 'you must live in location N' and 'you need to have done exactly what we're hiring for before for M time/projects/etc'. Everything is designed to reduce the number of people who'll apply, as if the company is the best place to work in the universe and everyone will be queuing up if the acceptance criteria aren't cleared defined. "Nice to have" skills shouldn't be featured. Confident candidates ignore them, while underconfident candidates read them as essentials.

I prefer adverts that increase the number of people who will apply. I want to see more candidates to select themselves in to the hiring pool rather than selecting themselves out. Job adverts should be pretty vague about tech and experience - so long as you're in the right area then everything else can be learned. Whether or not you get hired should be about whether or not you're going to be a valuable asset to the company in the long term. The ideal job advert should be 1/2 about why the company is a good place to work, 1/3 about what the job will entail once you've got up to speed, and 1/6 about the absolutely essential skills you'll need on day one.