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Developers often joke about job ads that require "5 or more years of experience" in about 10 different technologies. I once calculated the probability of a real person matching such a description and came to something like 1 out 500 trillion people. Unless the job ad is published to the entire Virgo Galactic Supercluster, they won't likely get a match.

There are rumors such ads are written so companies can officially reject citizens for H1B visa workers. However, Hanlon's Razor could be at play.

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Immigration related jobs ads will have these qualities:

a) a very specific list of requirements, that just happens to match a specific person. Definitely not any choices of language in the list, but possibly degree or equivalent experience if necessary.

b) be posted in a newspaper and on their main jobs page, but not widely elsewhere

c) ask for submissions by mail only, by a certain date

B and C are more telling than A though, because a weird list of requirements could be just someone weird, but narrowly posting and requiring applications by mail are part of exactly following the rules for demonstrating lack of candidates.

This is what happens when you over regulate hiring practices in the name of inclusion, fairness, and fighting bias. I've seen numerous issues with this in academia as well where someone will be a proven candidate who you know will excel at the job but you can't simply hire them because it's against the rules. You have to spend ages interviewing all of these unproven alternative candidates with focuses on minorities etc. If you reject all the alternative candidates arbitrarily and go with who you wanted in the first place then you risk getting slapped with a lawsuit. So instead we have to go through this huge song and dance where we write these fake job descriptions which as you say are obviously only written for one person, waste everyone's time, and flood the market with fake hiring opportunities. I've been on both sides of this process and it's very aggravating.

Even worse, sometimes orgs will set up basically fake interviews where they bring people in with no intention of hiring them just to put on a show to avoid a lawsuit.

What's an example of where the interviews are audited or inspected for "inclusion"? I've rarely heard about that. Usually if an org gets in trouble for alleged "inclusion" problems, it's because of who they actually do hire, not interview. Interview process auditing may be a side-effect of such claims, I suppose. And I would hope the inspectors study the actual job requirements and compare them to the job ad. Thus, putting bogus job requirements in the ad should be penalized. Job ads should match the actual job, not the person(s) one is trying to favor.

I can't point to specific suits off the top of my head, but I've seen a few from inside my former employer and heard my friends tell of instances where someone wasn't granted a position and sued on the basis of descrimination.

The issue is generally not that an org is descriminating, it's actually generally the exact opposite. The org is trying to institute policy which protects them from these suits and "standardizes" the hiring process. It's typically subunits or managers in the org who get fed up with the process because they can't hire who they want to efficiently, and circumvent it by writing these job descriptions. HR audits these employment calls and has no clue what half the words in the description mean or what the position actually entails, so it is not flagged.

I could imagine it might sometimes be the H1B thing, but more common are hyper-precise lists of technologies needed, when they already know the candidate they want but have a legal or administrative requirement to post the job.

Also, I get the impression hiring managers start with what they would like, and out of a long-bred instinct to have an opening bargaining position that's more than they actually want, they put down too many things.

Of course, if no offers come in, and they don't actually have an H1B or other candidate in mind, then maybe they go back and reduce what they're asking for, which would lead directly to this article's conclusion.

There is also the classic "need X years of experience with Y technology" but Y technology has only been in existence for <X years. I love HR departments.

Saw one last year that required enough Android experience that only the guys who were acquired by Google would be able to fulfill the requirement. It was for a mundane geeks-for-hire type company that churn out template type apps so probably didn't need anywhere near that level of experience.

I was at an interview for a job ad that had similar illogical requirements. When it was clear I wasn't getting the job for other reasons, I pointed out their error. They got all huffy. My doing that is a bad practice people-skill-wise, but it sure felt good getting deserving fools to eat their own cat-food.

Maybe those ads are written so you don't feel comfortable negociating your salary because you don't "cover" the requirements.

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