> Is it somehow secret knowledge reserved to "privileged" people that minimum requirements on job ads should be interpreted as a wish list more than a list of hard requirements?
It is definitely cultural knowledge that not all people have, and, more to the point, an understanding of what parts of a particular job ad that are stated as MQs are likely to be nice-to-haves and which are real MQs and which are nice to haves behind which are hiding real MQs (such as “Ph.D. in <field>” really meaning something like “a Ph.D. would be nice but a Masters is a hard minimum”), and therefore, how to evaluate whether it is worth expending effort applying for a job is non-universal cultural knowledge.
This often requires understanding of the hiring cultures of the particular job-field, industry, employer, and sometimes organizational subunit. Which is, for people just starting out (or looking outside of their past experience), highly network dependent. And equally substantively qualified people from underrepresented demographics arr likely to have weaker, in terms relevant to the task at hand, networks and therefore less access to this cultural knowledge.
> It's also something you very quickly learn when searching for your 1st job.
Or not, in part because there are lots of places where its not true and if you act like it is you will learn hard.
Lying about requirements in hiring may be common, but it is not a universal norm, and calling it out and denormalizing it is a good thing, even outside of discriminatory impact, but its also very much a practice that has particular adverse impact on underrepresented minorities.
It is definitely cultural knowledge that not all people have, and, more to the point, an understanding of what parts of a particular job ad that are stated as MQs are likely to be nice-to-haves and which are real MQs and which are nice to haves behind which are hiding real MQs (such as “Ph.D. in <field>” really meaning something like “a Ph.D. would be nice but a Masters is a hard minimum”), and therefore, how to evaluate whether it is worth expending effort applying for a job is non-universal cultural knowledge.
This often requires understanding of the hiring cultures of the particular job-field, industry, employer, and sometimes organizational subunit. Which is, for people just starting out (or looking outside of their past experience), highly network dependent. And equally substantively qualified people from underrepresented demographics arr likely to have weaker, in terms relevant to the task at hand, networks and therefore less access to this cultural knowledge.
> It's also something you very quickly learn when searching for your 1st job.
Or not, in part because there are lots of places where its not true and if you act like it is you will learn hard.
Lying about requirements in hiring may be common, but it is not a universal norm, and calling it out and denormalizing it is a good thing, even outside of discriminatory impact, but its also very much a practice that has particular adverse impact on underrepresented minorities.