Candidates being interviewed when not got minimum experience required

[hostleg]

On Monday, I attended an assessment morning with about 10 others. Job description said a minimum of 2 years of working in a call centre. Whilst awaiting in the reception area, we all started to chat about where we worked. Three lads only had 6-9 months call centre experience each. Why were they called up for the interview/assessment day? I won't be happy if any of these lads got a job and I didn't. One other wasn't impressed with this as whispered. I can't comment about the others.

DH once applied for a job via recruitment agency which required 2 years experience of a particular product. That product had only been released just under a year before. When he didn't get shortlisted for this reason (he'd been accurate about his 10 months experience), the recruiter wasn't remotely interested that everyone who'd said they had 2 years were demonstrably lying. Some (many?) people tell lies on their CVs in the hope that it gets them the interview. Once there, they hope their 'gift of the gab', will get them the job anyway.

Seems like they are flexible with their requirements. It is one thing if you need a specific qualification for legal reasons. Otherwise they can decide to deviate from the listing that is essentially their wish list.

I agree with PP that it's going to depend on how many people with 2 years apply. Surely most of us have seen jobs with unrealistic requirements for the role too.

Coming from an employers experience we've had people who have worked 10 yrs in our industry and another who has worked 2 yrs, and the person with 2 yrs experience out performed the other significantly on the job. Maybe the recruiters saw the potential or it could have been a personal reference from someone that knows that persons capability. Often a job listing is flexible to certain degree.

That’s not how that works.

Those requirements are more wish list than minimum requirement. I frequently interview people who may now hit 💯 of the asks but who have many and have a good cv which catches my eye.
i put far more store in an interview than a cv anyway .
t

This is a great example of why you should apply for jobs you only meet some of the criteria.

Genuinely, is there much difference between 9 months and 2 years with call centre work? I feel like by that point they’re probably very much competent and I’m not sure how much difference the extra 15 months would achieve.

They might have done a really good application or cover letter. They might have other transferable skills. They really shouldn’t have specified 2 years but I don’t think it’s reasonable to be angry if they get the job over you. It’s not only a number of years of experience decision - otherwise they’d hire based off just CVS and not bother with an interview.

And in future I’d apply for things in which you don’t fully meet the criteria. It pays off.

I'd guess they either didn't have enough suitably experienced candidates so decided to pick a few others to look at who were strong in other respects, the JD is badly written, or both.
When I became Head of Dept in my last job I rewrote a lot of the historically used JDs because they had stuff under essential characteristics which should have only been desirable and I felt that meant we were potentially missing some good candidates as a result. (We wouldn't shortlist anyone who didn’t have all the essentials even though some of them were things that really weren't essential at all and would have just been development needs for the right person.)
Just because someone doesn't tick every single box on a JD doesn't mean they're not a good candidate. In the OP's situation I suspect what the employer really means is that prior experience of working in a call centre is essential and two years or more is desirable. They should probably say that if that's what they mean of course but in my experience a lot of people write JDs without much training, describe their ideal candidate and then have to row back when it turns out there isn't actually a huge queue of perfect candidates.