[marcosdumay]

When the requirements of every single job are impossible, people will lie.

Several people have been recommending candidates to lie for IT-related jobs for a long time now, and honestly, I think the vast majority of positions have such a crazy set of requirements that they only get the lairs.

[bell-cot]

Amusing Idea: Advertise three vaguely-similar positions, only one of them real. Specify impossible-for-honest-humans requirements for the fake two. Then discard all applicants for the real position who also claimed to be qualified for a fake one.

[sfink]

Strict honesty here has always been a losing proposition. The "requirements" section of a job posting has almost never been accurate. It's more of an image they're painting. An honest applicant is one who reads the whole description to understand as best they can what the company is looking for, and sort of holistically matches their own expertise against that picture.

If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy.

I'm not going to address either the morality or advisability of being "dishonest" by this standard. I've just seen too many people sell themselves short, when in fact they are exactly what the company is looking for, it's just that the recruiter wasn't able to spell that out in the job description. And it's not necessarily because they were stupid either; if they only put the true minimum necessary criteria into a job post, then (1) they'll get flooded with underqualified candidates who don't even come close to what they need, and (2) they may very well miss out on good candidates because the job looks lame.

Source: I've been on both ends. As a candidate, I mentioned during the interview that I actually had no experience in the required technology X but I had related experience. The interviewer just laughed; it was obvious to both of us that it didn't matter. As someone offering a job (not the hiring manager but sort of), I talked to a couple of people who were hired into other roles in the company and asked why they didn't apply for our position, they seemed perfect for it (to me). Several of them pointed to some specific line item under the requirements that disqualified them. Sometimes it was an item that we'd removed later because we weren't getting enough people in, even though strictly speaking it was part of the job. We would sometimes push the recruiter to add "experience with X, or willing to learn X", but they would push back and honestly I'm not sure I know better than them. They were the ones who had to be the front line filtering through the noise resumes, after all.

[neilv]

I've seen a number of job posts that have a note near the end, encouraging people to apply even if they don't meet all the requirements.

There's also the job posts that distinguish between hard requirements and nice-to-haves, using various language (e.g., "bonus if you...").

[incompatible]

Well, there are people who hate the idea of lying, and can't bring themselves to do it, even it's applying for a job where they don't meet one of the requirements.

Most likely this isn't an attribute that most employers actually want, though.

[nathan_douglas]

My mother always put a really high emphasis on honesty. I wasn't the best kid, and certainly not the most honest (sorry, Mom), but I've always been absolutely forthright in résumés and cover letters. If I don't fully tick C, I mention it and share some quality or experience that I think might compensate. In my experience, it hasn't helped. I still do it, though, just because TBH I'm not 100% qualified for any of the jobs I apply for because I don't want to do the same shit I've already done for the rest of my career. I'm trying to grow, lol.

[hackable_sand]

I have seen several companies lie about the requirements they posted.

[crock_smacker]

> If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy.

I’m my experience the problem is that the missing “C” is deep level domain expertise outside of the technical end and that’s just so much more important than the other ones, and importantly, something you can’t really just learn on your own.

[sfink]

Sure, that happens, but that's also pretty clear to the job seeker. Don't try to BS your way past that one.

More commonly, that list of requirements comes from the recruiter quizzing the developers on what they need, and they throw out a bunch of stuff that could describe a person they'd be interested in hiring. But there are many other people who would work too, and the developers are likely to come up with stuff that they're familiar with and end up describing someone much like them with maybe 1 additional skill -- which is actually backwards, because they already have that expertise in the aggregate and what they really need is what they don't already have, but that stuff is harder to think of and value and therefore suggest to the recruiter because, well, it's stuff they're unfamiliar with.

A good recruiter will push back and make them figure out which are actual requirements. But getting it right requires a good recruiter + good developers who will make the time to think it through + good company culture. Most job posts are not coming from such a fortunate place.

On the flip side, the recruiter is hearing from management that they want someone who is perfectly carved out to accomplish a single task X, preferably someone who has already accomplished task X at another company so they can get hired and immediately do X here as well. Sure, they'll also be another body to shut up the whiny developers talking about how they have too much to do, but the position is open because they've been asking for X for months and the developers keep saying they don't have enough bandwidth. So they describe what they want to the recruiter in painful specificity. If their conception of X requires technologies and tools A, B, and C, then their requirements list is something like "Minimum 10 years experience doing X. Expert in A. Expert in B. Expert in C. Must have a PhD from my school or a school I'm envious of."

Maybe I've just had some bad experiences, but this is why I don't take requirements lists too seriously. Sure, if it wants "experience in medical imaging" and you have nothing related, don't apply. But if it gives a laundry list of specific technologies, it's either developers looking for clones or managers looking for someone to do a specific project.

[Viliam1234]

Similar idea: make a list of "required" and "optional but nice to have" skills for the position. Among the optional ones, include experience with a non-existent technology. Discard everyone who claims to have the experience.