What "requirements" actually means (and what's just wishlist)

Postings routinely list ten-plus "requirements" for roles that will realistically be filled by candidates meeting six or seven of them. Treating the full list as a hard bar to clear is one of the most common reasons people skip applying to roles they'd actually be a strong fit for.

A rough heuristic: requirements phrased as a specific number ("5+ years," "a degree in X") tend to be closer to real gates. Requirements phrased as a skill or tool name, especially in a list of eight or more, are usually a wishlist of nice-to-haves compiled by committee.

There's also a positional tell. The first two or three bullets under "requirements" are usually the ones the hiring manager actually cares about — they tend to get written first, before the list gets padded out by whoever reviews the posting afterward. A bullet buried eighth in a list of twelve is doing a lot less work than it looks like.

Applicant tracking systems reinforce the padding problem: many are configured to keyword-match against the full requirements list, so recruiters add extra terms defensively, "just in case" a resume gets filtered out otherwise. That's a system incentive, not a reflection of what the team actually needs on day one.

Across enough saved postings, the pattern becomes obvious — the same two or three skills show up in almost every listing for a role, and the rest is long-tail noise that varies posting to posting. That's the signal worth learning, not the full list.