Job Description with contradictions

Question

Can someone help interpret this IT manager job description please as I can't read how much experience they actually want

3-4 years overall work experience max
Significant client facing and PM experience

I don't understand how someone would get significant i.e. a few years as a PM if they had only been in IT for 3 years?

Related (not duplicate) - http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/1478/2322 — enderland, Sep 16 '15 at 16:40
"3-4 years overall work experience max" just tells you how much they're willing to pay. — Dan Pichelman, Sep 16 '15 at 16:50
@DanPichelman There are also jobs where the posting is HR red tape and the requirements make it so the internal candidate is the only one that could fill them. — RubberChickenLeader, Sep 16 '15 at 16:52
It makes much more sense if we assume a particularly bad editing error and "max" was intended to be min. Or maybe they're looking for someone named Max. — keshlam, Sep 16 '15 at 18:16
looks like a typo to me, hope it's not indicative of the companies professionalism in general — Kilisi, Sep 16 '15 at 21:25

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 16 '15 at 16:18

Welcome to the magical world of job descriptions - where often the bullets are all made up and the preconditions just don't matter.

Now is a good time to let you know that you can send your CV even to jobs where you don't meet all of the requirements and that the people who publish job listings are often not the people you'll be working with directly - so they're often not the most versed in technical terms.

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 16 '15 at 16:50

Can someone help interpret this IT manager job description please as I can't read how much experience they actually want

3-4 years overall work experience max

Significant client facing and PM experience

I don't understand how someone would get significant i.e. a few years as a PM if they had only been in IT for 3 years?

They want 4 years of work experience max.

Within those 4 years, some significant portion of it must be "client facing and PM".

So (assuming these are the only 2 requirements), if you have been in a client facing PM position for 3 or 4 years - you are qualified.

If you have worked for 5 years at anything - you are not qualified.

They may have odd definitions of "client facing", "PM", and "significant". There's no way to tell for sure without asking them.

Terrible job description... doesn't sound promising.

There are no circumstances where I would consider hiring a PM who didn't have experience doing something before becoming a PM, so yes, having no more than 4 years experience and all of that basically as a PM is a huge red flag. — HLGEM, Sep 16 '15 at 17:34

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 16 '15 at 16:26

Are these contradictory?

3-4 years overall work experience max
Significant client facing and PM experience

I find it useful to read the parts of a whole as if they do not contradict.

So I think the best interpretation of what they're asking for is that the client-facing and PM experience be a significant part of the 3-4 years of work experience.

If there really is a contradiction in the intentions, but you feel up for this sort of job, feel free to apply. Job openings frequently cannot find people who fit the precise descriptions, and so instead they will take the best approximate fit. If you don't apply, you definitely won't get it, though.

Good luck!

Job Description with contradictions

3 Answers3