For anyone starting out
The contradiction stops people applying at all, read as evidence the advert is not really for them. Usually it is proof of something else: the list mixes a wishlist with a bar.
Most requirements lists are written by pulling together everything the team wishes the last person had known. Not by working out the minimum a new person genuinely needs on day one. “5 years” on an entry-level posting is usually one line copied from a more senior template, or a number someone picked to sound serious. It is rarely a bar the hiring manager will hold you to.
That doesn't mean every number on the page is soft. Some requirements on an entry-level advert are real and non-negotiable. A specific qualification, a right to work, a tool the whole team already runs on. The problem is that “entry-level” gives no way to tell which lines are the wishlist and which are the bar.
Usually a wishlist
A vague number of years attached to a broad skill: “5+ years in a fast-paced environment,” “experience across multiple projects.” Nothing specific enough to check.
Answer the thing underneath it instead of the number. What you've actually done that resembles the shape of the work, however short a time you've done it for.
Usually a real bar
A specific credential, a named tool, a legal requirement: “must hold X qualification,” “right to work in the UK,” “working knowledge of Y.” Concrete enough that a screener can check it in one look.
If this is genuinely missing, that's worth knowing before you spend an evening on the application, not after.
Friday reads the specific posting and tells you, requirement by requirement, what your record already shows. Then you are not guessing at which line to take seriously.
Check your CVThe number is the part of the advert easiest to write and hardest to defend. It's rarely the part worth answering first.
The honest version of this advice is not “apply anyway, numbers don't matter”. Some do. A requirements list mixes a genuine bar with a wishlist under one heading, and entry-level adverts are where that mixing happens most. The number alone cannot tell you which is which. Reading each requirement on its own, against what you've actually done, is what tells you.
That's also the reason a first CV so often reads thinner than it is. Nobody has gone through it line by line asking which of the advert's requirements it already answers.
Upload the advert alongside your CV, and Friday tells you which requirements you already have evidence for. Then decide whether the number was ever the real bar.
Friday is a career evidence engine for people who have done the work and cannot get the page to show it.
It is early and there are rough edges. What people report is what gets fixed first.
Paste as many adverts as you like, and one CV is composed for you to keep. The record stays yours whether or not you ever pay.