Unrealistic Experience Requirements

This happened to me - got a call from a recruiter who said client needed 10 years. I replied 'I was a teenager back then' to which she said 'so you don't have enough experience?'. I responded 'Well I helped create the thing, it hasn't been around 10 years'. Silence followed, I was thoroughly dis-interested after that.

I'm guessing maybe it's the hiring side that wants people who already have $x number of years experience? it reminds me of the guy who wrote angular(?) and wanted to apply for a job but couldn't, because it required 8 years of experience and this was only 5 years after he wrote it.

Just because they put 3+ years experience on the job req, doesn't mean that not having 3 years experience will preclude you from consideration. Job reqs are often a wish list, and they'll hire someone who only fills some of the reqs.

I recently saw a job posting that said we want someone with less than 10 years experience for a gig that seemed like 10 years of experience would be beneficial. It was a sysops gig working with ASM/DEP and workspaceONE.

In my experience, almost all of those "must have X years of experience with Y" requirements are written up by HR people who are loosely interpreting poorly understood requirements told to them by either the hiring manager, or other HR people. In many or most cases, the people writing up those job postings are not the same people who would be interviewing or hiring you, and they're more aspirational requirements than anything else. They hope that someone with X years of experience

Don't forget that people with 3+ years experience probably aren't applying for entry level jobs

It's missing the obligatory "We are looking for someone with n years of experience." where n > age of the project.

I've seen several job ads requiring "5+ years experience with Technology X" where Technology X is not yet 5 years old.

feel free to have them reach out for feedback about why we passed on them, I offer that to anyone who asks. we have taken screens with new grads and folks with less than 2 years of professional experience from this job posting already so I assure you that line is accurate.

Good advice but as many are pointing out, many a times the job description will have some kid of "number of years experience" requirement. Even if it means asking for X number of years when the technology has existed for X-N years.