You will be able to pull the real requirements out of a job ad and separate them from the wish list.
You open a job ad for a role you want and count fourteen requirements. You meet nine. The ad asks for five years of experience and you have three. It mentions a tool you have used twice. Most people close the tab at this point, and some of them were exactly who the hiring manager was hoping to find.
Job ads are written by busy people, often by copying an older ad and adding to it. Once you know how they are put together, you can tell which lines matter and which are a wish list. This lesson shows you how to read an ad the way a recruiter would.
Most ads mix two kinds of requirement in one list. Some are true must-haves, the things the hiring manager will screen on: a professional licence, a language the team works in, a core tool they use every day. Others are nice-to-haves, things that would be pleasant but that the right candidate could learn.
Ads rarely label which is which, but they leave clues. The first few requirements are usually the ones the manager thought of first, and those tend to be the ones they care about most. Words such as "must", "required" or "essential" mark the real filters. Words such as "preferred", "a plus", "advantageous" or "exposure to" mark the extras. A requirement that also appears in the job duties, such as "build weekly dashboards" alongside "experience with Power BI", is probably real. A requirement that appears nowhere else in the ad is often left over from an older version.
A practical rule for Wei Ling, and for you: if you meet most of the must-haves and some of the nice-to-haves, apply. Plenty of people get hired without ticking every line.
One ad can be odd. A hiring manager might want something unusual because of a specific project. Twenty ads for the same role are much harder to argue with. Phrases that repeat across many employers show what the market values for that role, as opposed to what one manager happens to want.
This is why the activity asks for twenty. When Wei Ling read twenty ads for supply chain data analyst, "stakeholders" and "communicate insights" appeared in most of them, often in the same breath as SQL. That told her the market wanted analysts who could explain results to non-technical teams, which she already did every week, and that she should say so clearly on her CV. A single ad would never have shown her that.
Repeated phrases are also the words recruiters type into search boxes. You will use them in module 3 when you tailor your CV and in module 4 when you write your LinkedIn headline.
"Minimum five years of experience" sounds like a hard rule. Often it is a shortcut. The manager does not care about the years themselves. They care about what someone with five years can usually do: run a project without supervision, handle a difficult client, know the common mistakes before making them.
If you are short on years, show the skill directly. Someone with three years who has led a system migration across two warehouses may be a better fit than someone with six years of routine reporting. Put that evidence near the top of your CV, and the gap in years matters less. It will not work for every role. Some employers do filter strictly, and senior roles often need the judgement that only time builds. But a year or two short is not an automatic no.
Reading ads closely also protects you. Job scams are common in Singapore, and the Singapore Police Force and ScamShield regularly warn about them. Many follow a recognisable pattern, and the warning signs show up in the ad itself or in the first message.
Vague duties, such as "simple online tasks" or "liking products", with no clear employer or team. Pay far above what the work would normally earn, such as a large daily sum for a few hours of easy tasks. A request to move the conversation from the job site to WhatsApp or Telegram early on, often to someone with no company email. Any request for you to pay a fee, put money in before you can withdraw earnings, or hand over your bank login or Singpass details.
If an ad shows one of these signs, check the company's own website and its listing on MyCareersFuture or LinkedIn before you reply. If it shows several, walk away. A genuine employer does not need your Singpass password to consider you.
Reading ads this way gives you more than a feeling. You can count. Copy every skill or requirement from each ad into one column, merge items that mean the same thing ("Excel" and "Microsoft Excel"), and tally how many ads mention each one. The skills that appear in most of the ads go on your list of must-learns or must-shows. The ones that appear in two or three are optional.
Wei Ling's count gave her a short list of the top skills for her target role, with numbers next to each. It replaced a vague worry that she "might not have enough" with a clear view of the two skills she lacked and the six she already had.
That count is the activity below. Pick one role, collect twenty ads, and tally what they ask for.
Collect twenty ads for one role, list every skill mentioned, and count how often each appears.
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