Do I Need to Meet Every Job Requirement?

You're reading a job posting for a "Marketing Manager" and it asks for:

• 7+ years of marketing experience
• Expert-level proficiency in Salesforce, HubSpot, and Marketo
• Strong graphic design skills (Adobe Creative Suite)
• Video production and editing experience
• Full-stack web development capabilities
• Financial modeling and budget management
• Experience managing teams of 10+
• MBA preferred

You're looking at a job description for at least three different people.

This is what I call the kitchen sink job posting—where someone threw in every skill they could think of, hoping the perfect candidate would somehow appear.

Here's how to read these postings, and when to apply anyway.

Why Job Postings Get Bloated

There are a few things happening when a job description reads like a wish list:

They don't know what they need. Someone said "we need marketing help" and the hiring manager listed everything marketing-adjacent they could think of. They're not looking for a specific person—they're hoping a candidate will help them figure out what they actually need.

They're combining roles. This is especially common at smaller companies or startups. They can't afford a marketing person AND a designer AND a web developer, so they write a posting for someone who's all three. These roles exist, but they're rare—and they usually come with a very specific title like "Creative Director" or "Head of Growth," not "Marketing Manager."

HR added padding. Sometimes the actual hiring manager wanted five things, but HR added seven more based on a template. Now the posting looks intimidating even though half the requirements are negotiable.

They want to filter aggressively. By setting the bar impossibly high, they discourage "unqualified" candidates from applying. The irony? This often filters out good candidates who read carefully, while attracting confident applicants who ignore requirements anyway.

The Translation Guide

Here's what various job posting phrases usually mean in practice:

The Real Red Flag: Mixing Domains

A long list of requirements isn't automatically a red flag. The red flag is when the requirements don't make sense together.

Marketing + design + basic web skills? That's a stretch but coherent.

Marketing + accounting + IT support + sales? That's three or four jobs wearing a trench coat pretending to be one job.

When a posting asks for skills from fundamentally different domains, it usually means:

The Green Flags: What Good Job Descriptions Look Like

Here's what clarity looks like in a posting:

Focused scope. The responsibilities describe one coherent role, not five jobs stapled together. You can picture what a typical week would look like.

Prioritized requirements. They separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. They tell you what's essential versus what would be a bonus.

Realistic experience levels. The years of experience match the level of the role. Entry-level positions don't ask for 10 years. Senior roles don't ask for expertise in 15 different tools.

Skill coherence. The required skills make sense together. They're in the same general domain and would reasonably live in one person.

Clear outcomes. They tell you what success looks like, not just what tasks you'll do. "Grow organic traffic by 30%" is clearer than "manage SEO."

Should You Apply Anyway?

The common advice is that job postings are wish lists, and you should apply if you meet 60-70% of the requirements.

That's... roughly true. But it depends.

Skip if: You'd have to pretend to be someone you're not to even get an interview. The salary doesn't match the scope. The company doesn't pass the basic research check.

How ReApply Helps With This

This is where ReApply's job posting quality assessment comes in.

When you analyze a job, ReApply doesn't just tell you whether you're qualified—it evaluates the posting itself. The analysis flags issues like:

• Unrealistic requirements: When the skill list reads like a wish list for three people
• Buzzword nonsense: When the posting is heavy on jargon and light on actual job description
• Posting type: Whether this looks like an established role, a startup opportunity, or something more speculative

You also get a breakdown of the actual requirements—what's likely critical versus what's probably padding—so you can make an informed decision about whether to apply.

The Bigger Picture

Every job posting is written by a person (or now, sometimes, an AI). Those people have varying levels of clarity about what they need, varying skill at writing job descriptions, and varying honesty about what they're actually offering.

Your job as a candidate isn't to meet every requirement—it's to figure out what the role actually is, whether you could do it well, and whether it's worth pursuing.

That's a skill. And like any skill, it gets better with practice.

And the better decisions you make, the more likely you'll end up somewhere that's actually a good fit—not just somewhere that wrote a compelling job ad.

This is Part 3 of the Red Flags in Job Ads series. Start from the beginning with Part 1: The Wide Salary Range.