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I've seen dozens, if not hundreds, of job postings over the last few years for junior-mid level roles where the company is specifying insane experience requirements. Some "entry level" roles require five years or more experience in a role. Sometimes the listed skills don't even roughly correspond or across several different industries. Sometimes meeting the requirements is impossible (say five years experience for something that debuted in 2012). Other times, the listed required experience seems to be overkill for what the job seems to actually need.
Granted, you don't want someone with a month's flight experience piloting a loaded 787, or a surgeon trainee with a week in residency performing delicate surgery, but for general office jobs, do you think many ads overstate the experience actually needed to perform the job?
You shouldn't worry so much about the specific qualifications but think about what related skill sets you may have when applying for jobs. Of course there are some qualifications they will state as must haves. You should think of yourself as a car salesman. A customer may come in with an idea of what features he needs or must have. You job is to convince him of substituting with features he didn't think of because he didn't know what else is out there.
You shouldn't worry so much about the specific qualifications but think about what related skill sets you may have when applying for jobs. Of course there are some qualifications they will state as must haves. You should think of yourself as a car salesman. A customer may come in with an idea of what features he needs or must have. You job is to convince him of substituting with features he didn't think of because he didn't know what else is out there.
You have to be able to sell yourself, even if you're way above the minimum qualifications. Someone that doesn't meet the formal reqs but is a good salesman may get the job, whereas someone way above and beyond the reqs that doesn't do a good job of convincing the hiring manager may not get the job.
This. We have had to resort to compromising on requirements just to have candidates to review. In the end, most candidates would be unable to do the job well, even with the bare minimum requirements satisfied, because their satisfaction of the requirements has tended to be quite superficial. The reason for this discontinuity is financial - over the last fifteen years the expectation of productivity has skyrocketed as shown by the blue line on the chart at the top of this page. Yet, the resources allocated to accomplish all the different kinds of work has roughly followed the red line on that chart. If we had the resources we had fifteen years ago, and the expectation that we'd get work done as we did fifteen years ago, then our minimum requirements would be significant lower for each position we fill. Instead, we're forced to "do more with less" fighting with other employers for the few employees who actually have the greater breadth and depth of capability. When we cannot find such employees, we are faced with the choice of hiring someone who will invariably fail to perform or not hiring someone and doing our best to carry on without the position filled. It's a tough situation to be in.
In my company there's an opening for a position that equates to data entry. Basically getting daily printouts and Inputting the information into our database. Yet the requirements are that you have a 5yr bachelor's degree. I can teach my 16yr old sister to do the job in 1 days time.
Yes. People vastly underestimate applicants' intelligence.
Every job I've had originally required years of experience, yet were things I was either already competent in, or was able to learn within a week at most. And I never had any performance issues on the job.
No one should need 5 years of experience to plot averages or anything of equivalent 'difficulty'. Anyone could be a pro at that within an hour.
Obviously there are jobs where experience really is needed, but when it comes to things that anyone could master quickly on their own, the requirements can be ridiculous.
People are generally not stupid, so I don't know why hiring managers assume that they are.
This. We have had to resort to compromising on requirements just to have candidates to review. In the end, most candidates would be unable to do the job well, even with the bare minimum requirements satisfied, because their satisfaction of the requirements has tended to be quite superficial. The reason for this discontinuity is financial - over the last fifteen years the expectation of productivity has skyrocketed as shown by the blue line on the chart at the top of this page. Yet, the resources allocated to accomplish all the different kinds of work has roughly followed the red line on that chart. If we had the resources we had fifteen years ago, and the expectation that we'd get work done as we did fifteen years ago, then our minimum requirements would be significant lower for each position we fill. Instead, we're forced to "do more with less" fighting with other employers for the few employees who actually have the greater breadth and depth of capability. When we cannot find such employees, we are faced with the choice of hiring someone who will invariably fail to perform or not hiring someone and doing our best to carry on without the position filled. It's a tough situation to be in.
This doesn't make any sense. There are a lot of talented people with a variety of skill-sets who are actively searching for gainful employment. Why doesn't your organization create position descriptions with defined skills-sets and search for viable applicants (with the understanding that direct "on the job" training will be necessary, to ensure that the hired individual is capable of fulfilling their new role(s)...)?
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I can teach my 16yr old sister to do the job in 1 days time.
