People don’t mean what they say.
They think they do, but words and criteria are best efforts to get needs and wants out of the brain and into the world. They’re imperfect.
Job postings are my favorite example.
In a world of no constraints, facing no actual candidates, a hirer will list out a bunch of things they think would indicate someone suited to solve a problem.
These are all proxies. Years of experience, education, particular skill sets, etc. They may or may not actually correlate with someone suited for the job, and they are almost never causal.
Realizing everything is a proxy for a deeper desire rather than a hard rule opens the world up. You see that the real key is to understand people’s needs more than to listen to the proxies they choose to define them.
You can get creative and show them something they hadn’t considered.
You don’t need to have the stuff listed on the job posting if you can show something better.