If you've spent any time job hunting in Irish tech, you'll know the feeling: you find a role that looks right, then you hit the requirements section and your confidence drops. "5+ years' experience with X." "Must be a self starter who thrives in a fast paced environment." "Nice to have: 12 different technologies you've never used together."
Here's the thing most candidates don't realise. A job spec is rarely a precise spec of the person the employer will actually hire. It's usually a wishlist, drafted under time pressure, sometimes by a hiring manager, sometimes by HR, sometimes stitched together from an old template. Knowing how to read past the wording is one of the most useful skills you can bring to a job search, and it's one we spend a lot of our time on with candidates at Software Placements.
Here's how to decode a spec properly, so you know when to apply, when to push back, and when a requirement genuinely isn't up for discussion.
Why job specs say more than they mean
Most job descriptions are written to do two things at once: describe the role, and filter out unsuitable applicants. The problem is that the person writing it often lists everything they'd love in a candidate rather than what's actually essential to do the job well. A requirement can end up on the page because it was true of the last person in the role, because a stakeholder asked for it late in the drafting process, or simply because "nice to have" got typed as "required" by mistake.
A useful rule of thumb: the further down the list a requirement sits, the less likely it is to be a genuine deal breaker. The first two or three bullet points are usually what the hiring manager actually cares about. Items buried near the bottom, such as extra certifications, specific tools, or an exact number of years, are frequently aspirational rather than essential.
This isn't just anecdotal. Indeed's Hiring Lab has tracked a real decline in rigid "years of experience" requirements on job postings generally, with the shift most pronounced in exactly the kind of well paid, highly educated sectors that tech and engineering sit in, a sign that more employers are moving toward assessing actual skills rather than ticking boxes on paper. You can read the full data breakdown on the Hiring Lab site.
Common phrases, and what they usually mean
A few terms come up again and again in Irish tech job specs. Here's how we'd translate them:
"5+ years' experience with [technology]": Often shorthand for "we want someone who won't need much ramp up time." If you have 3 years and can demonstrate depth rather than just duration, this is frequently negotiable, especially for mid sized companies without rigid HR sign off processes.
"Must have a degree in Computer Science or related field": Increasingly soft in practice. Plenty of Irish tech employers, particularly scale ups, now care more about a portfolio, a bootcamp background, or demonstrable on the job skill than the credential itself.
"Fast paced environment" / "wears many hats": Translation: expect ambiguity, shifting priorities, and probably not much process. Not a red flag on its own, but worth asking about directly at interview if structure matters to you.
"Strong communication skills": Usually genuinely important, especially for roles that sit between engineering and the business (BAs, QA leads, technical PMs). Don't dismiss this one as filler.
"Nice to have: experience with [long list of tools]": This is a wishlist, not a checklist. If you tick two or three out of ten, that's often enough to be shortlisted, particularly for permanent roles where employers expect to invest in ramp up.
"Competitive salary": Means the employer hasn't published a number and wants room to negotiate based on who applies. Worth asking early rather than assuming it maps to market rate.
In semiconductor roles specifically, terms like "tape out experience," "cleanroom certified," or "DFT experience" tend to be genuinely non negotiable, because they map to specific, hands on technical capability rather than a general proxy like years of experience. These are worth treating differently from generic software requirements.
What's usually negotiable, and what isn't
Broadly, requirements fall into two buckets.
Often negotiable:
- Exact years of experience, particularly if you can show equivalent depth
- Specific tool or framework experience, where the underlying skill transfers (e.g. React vs. Vue, AWS vs. Azure)
- Formal qualifications, where a portfolio or track record tells the same story
- Anything phrased as "nice to have" or listed after the first handful of bullets
Rarely negotiable:
- Legal right to work in Ireland or a specific visa/permit status
- Security clearance or vetting requirements
- Safety critical certifications (cleanroom protocols, specific compliance training in regulated environments)
- Salary band minimums set by finance or the board, rather than the hiring manager
- Client mandated requirements on contract roles, where the end client, not the agency or even the employer, sets the terms
- Recruiters exist partly to know which of these apply in a given case, because the spec on the page rarely tells you. A hiring manager might genuinely be flexible on "3 years' experience," but have zero room to move on a client's insistence on a specific security clearance for a contract role. Asking a recruiter directly, "is this one actually fixed, or is there room here?", will usually get you a straighter answer than trying to read the tea leaves yourself.
Should you apply anyway?
A good working rule: if you meet roughly 60 to 70% of the requirements, and the first few bullet points are the ones you're strongest on, it's worth applying. Employers everywhere, including in Ireland's fairly tight tech and semiconductor market, are used to compromising on the wishlist items when the fundamentals are there. LinkedIn's own research on hiring practices makes a similar point about broadening the pool by separating what's essential from what's simply preferred, rather than filtering purely on paper credentials (see their breakdown of skills based hiring).
Where we'd tell you not to bother: if the gap is in something on our "rarely negotiable" list above, such as visa status, safety certification, or a specific clearance, no amount of enthusiasm at interview will close that gap, and it's better to spend your energy on a role where it won't come up.
If you're not sure how a specific spec should be read, that's exactly the kind of thing to raise with your recruiter before you spend hours tailoring a CV and cover letter around it. It's also worth pairing this with knowing what the job titles themselves actually mean in practice. We covered that in Understanding Tech Job Titles in Ireland: What They Really Mean, which is a useful companion read if a title itself is throwing you off before you even get to the requirements list.
The short version
A job spec is a starting point for a conversation, not a locked contract. Read the first few bullets as the real priorities, treat anything near the bottom of a "nice to have" list as genuinely optional, and separate requirements tied to law, safety or client mandates (fixed) from requirements tied to experience, tools or credentials (usually flexible). And when in doubt, ask. A five minute conversation with a recruiter who knows the client will tell you more than an hour spent second guessing a bullet point.
If you'd like a second opinion on whether a role is worth applying for, or want help reading between the lines of a spec you've found, get in touch or browse our latest IT and semiconductor roles.