Let's say you send your resume to a company and they contact you and want to interview you for a position. It sounds great, but when you get the requisition number for the job and look it up on the web you see that it has a requirement for "20 years of experience" in the industry, which is twice as much as you have. Do you call the company back to make sure they know how much experience you have, or do you just go to the interviews and possibly end up embarrassing yourself and irritating the interviewers?
Get your Tim Geithner TAX CHEAT! stamps!
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In a perfect world the potential employee actually matches all of the requirements for experience. In the world that you work would an additional 10 years experience really make a difference. Seems that the last 5 to 7 years are relevent and beyond that you are out of date. Go to the interview, tout your ten years and get the job. What's the worst that could happen?
The worst that can happen is they will all get a good laugh out of your resume, and throw it in the trash. The best that can happen is that they discover what a gem of an employee you are and hire you. I'd say the potential benefit is well worth the risk. Go for it!
As long as your resume is accurate, I'd just assume they can't find anyone else with all of their requirements, and you fit the picture best.
If they have your resume, they SHOULD know what your experience is. Go to the interview. It may be the opportunity you're looking for.
Good Luck!
I would like to agree with the previous comments... I think that the worst that could happen is relatively minor, compared to the best that could happen. It might be very impressive if you come across as confident about your experience and abilities. Besides, 10 years of experience is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. I wish I had 10 years of experience in MY career, I wouldn't be working at Old Navy to pay the bills!
You sent your resume; they contacted you. You're under neither a moral nor an ethical obligation to remind them of their "requirements." Just go to the interview and be candid.
Official job "requirements" are often BS written to preclude somebody's cousin from being nepotized into a juicy slot; take it from someone who's written a slew of them.
Further to what Francis said, who hasn't seen ads for a C# programmer with 7 years of experience? (Or for a Java programmer with 7 years of experience, about 5 years ago?)
As long as your resume accurately describes your type and length of experience, if they called you in for an interview, it is probably because the advertised requirements for the job are more of a hope than a requirement.
It seems like job requirements, especially ones for technical jobs, call for scads of experience in 5-10 programming languages/technologies/etc. It's very unlikely that they are ever going to find anyone who meets all of those requirements. Even if someone like that exists, they probably already have a cushy job working for twice the month. But at least they discourage the people with 6 months of experience in one of them from applying. Go for it! The most important thing in technical jobs, after all, is being able to learn.
Er, I meant money not month.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to the interview, although I did call them back and point out that I don't have the years of experience that they're advertising for. I didn't want to walk in the door and be embarrassed because they're expecting someone twice my age.
My present job "required" 5 years of experience; I had 2 1/2. It happens all the time.