Most recruiters have no idea what they are recruiting for. It's like a game of telephone, by the time the job description reaches you, it has gone through so much dressing and corparatification it either describes a whole IT deparment or nothing specific at all.

Getting hired needs an entirely different set of skill than whatever job you will do. Well except maybe if it's marketing, because the whole process seems like a song and dance where you need to sell yourself.

That's because you are not considering that the person who wrote that is a human.

I've written many postings. They are always a best guess. When I write mine, I try to be cautious about this and keep two separate sections and put required vs nice to have in two groups, but the place I currently work has a different template and that doesn't fit, so I have to fill in words that I hope convey the meaning I want to the applicant.

In other words, I have a picture in my head of the rough skillet I think is appropriate.

You submit your resume. If it's missing something critical (this is a software job and you've never touched software) that's an easy drop and a waste of everyone's time. But I assume you don't mean this. I assume you mean something more like "I'm looking for someone with experience with oscilloscopes, multimeters, data acquisition, and function generators" and then you say "oh well I've never used a scope just the rest so I shouldn't apply". In terms of what I wrote, the behavior is logical. But I am a human, what I wrote was trying to give examples of the skill I want, not saying "we won't spend half a day to train you on scopes".

You apply so that you can present a picture of your life that you think fulfills the need I am looking for. You write your resume to make that match as clear as it can be. Sometimes we both miss the mark, and I have to go revise the job posting to make what I want clearer. Sometimes you miss the mark and while you have enough skill to do the job you couldn't figure out how to present it. But all we are both doing is trying to see if you have the underlying hard to capture, hard to document, hard to describe skills I actually want you to have, filtered through the rigidity of the hr org.

None of this is as hard or complex or weird or, shockingly to me, malicious, as people here make it out to be.

yeah but what if you're wrong? it's not like it would hurt to apply anyways