Telling a real requirement from a wish, in an advert

A requirements list is rarely one list. Separating the three kinds tells you which items are worth a sentence and which are noise.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-13

— a wish list is not an entry exam.

Requirements lists are usually assembled rather than written. Somebody copies the last advert, adds the tool the team started using in March, and keeps the years-of-experience line that has been there since 2019. Reading the list as a single set of tests is the mistake.

Three kinds, in one list

Hard requirements are the ones the employer cannot waive: a professional registration, a licence to drive the vehicle, a right to work, a qualification a regulator insists on. Policy requirements are internal rules, such as a degree attached to a grade of post, which are sometimes waivable and sometimes not. Wishes are everything else, and most of a typical list is wishes.

How to tell them apart

Hard requirements are specific and named, because they have to be: a registration number, a named certificate, a legal status. Wishes are general and stacked: familiarity with, exposure to, experience in a list of six tools. The vaguer the phrasing, the further down the priority list it was written.

The years-of-experience line

Almost always a proxy for scope rather than a measurement of time. An advert asking for five years usually means work at a certain size and independence. If your evidence shows that scope in three years, the evidence is the better argument, and writing it up is covered in how to write experience bullets.

What the letter engine does with the list

The cover letter builder makes no distinction between kinds, and that is the honest behaviour. Every requirement is tested against your evidence. Where the evidence supports it, a sentence from your own résumé can carry the claim, traced back to the line it came from. Where it does not, the requirement is listed as a gap and nothing is asserted. That mechanism is described in the gaps list is the interview.

Why that is more useful than a match percentage

A percentage flattens three kinds of item into one number. A named list of two gaps tells you what to prepare for, what to learn, and whether the application is worth writing. That is the argument in reading your own gaps list.

What to do with the wishes you meet

Make sure the words are actually in your document, in the lines that describe the work. Somebody may search the stored text for them, which is the one real thing behind keyword advice. What that looks like without stuffing is in ATS résumé keywords and keyword stuffing does not work. Then run the ATS checker to confirm the document still extracts cleanly after the edit.

What a preference is actually for

Sorting, when there are more applicants than time. An employer who lists six tools is not expecting six; they are giving themselves a way to order a pile. That is why meeting four of them is often enough to be read, and why meeting all six of a wish list matters less than evidencing the two the work actually needs. Reading the first paragraphs of the advert tells you which two, because the described work is what somebody will do on Monday and the list is what a template asked for on Friday.

What this page does not claim

That an employer will overlook a requirement they said was essential. Some will and some will not, and nothing here can tell you which, because nothing here sees the employer. What is claimed is about reading: the list contains different kinds of item, and treating a preference as a barrier costs applications that were available to you.

There is one case where the distinction genuinely does not apply, and it is worth naming so this page is not misread. A hard requirement is hard. A nursing registration, a teaching qualification, a licence for the vehicle, or a right to work in the country are not items to be argued around in a covering letter, and an application that skips past one wastes your afternoon and somebody else's. The honest reading is the useful one in both directions, and applying when you meet half the criteria takes the other half of the question.

One habit that makes the distinction easier over time. Note the requirement that stopped you each time you skip an advert, and read the list back after a month. Items appearing once were preferences you treated as walls. Items appearing repeatedly are the real boundary of the roles you are aiming at, and they are worth a decision: learn the thing, aim slightly differently, or accept it. That is a choice made from evidence rather than from the discouragement of one afternoon.