Are postdoc job ads these days asking too much from a PhD graduate?

[gringer]

"We require 5 years experience with the Nanopore MinION!"

I don't think past experience is necessary for job requirements. Whatever the job, you're still going to need to spend a few weeks (or months) training new people up. People who can learn how to do things quickly are much better than people who know how to do lots of things (although those two frequently go together). Productivity is lost while you are training a new person for the job, so the quicker you can get out of that rut, the better.

I would prefer a person who has a wide range of skills (but not including everything in the job application) to a person has only experience in the specific categories that are on the job application (regardless of how good they are at those skills).

[Melissa]

You have a point. Occasionally you do get people who are over-qualified. Recently, my lab received an application for a lab technician position from somebody who has a PhD and is interested to move here.

[Brian Bushnell]

Job postings routinely ask for impossible sets of qualifications; I wouldn't worry about it. They have to choose from people that apply, and nobody who fulfills absurd requirements will apply for a job that pays very little.

[Melissa]

That's true. But this is the only way to start in academia. Postdoc positions have become so competitive because there are not many jobs around.

[vivek_]

In my opinion post doc salaries are absurdly low for the level of talent and expertise they provide/are expected to provide.

[Melissa]

Looking at the bioinformatics postdoc job ads these days, I can't help but wonder if..
a) Some job ads are asking too much from a fresh phD graduate?
a) Or are they trying to recruit people with postdoc experience? A fresh PhD graduate will not stand a chance
c) Do they really find someone who fulfill all the criteria?

The reason I'm saying this is I often find postdoc job ads list many requirements. The common requirement is NGS data analysis but it's not just any NGS data analysis! It has be a combination of 3-5 skills such as... *Ahem clear my throat... genome assembly, transcriptome sequencing, gene expression, Chip-Seq, miRNA sequencing, methylation study etc. In addition, one must have experience in Unix environment and scripting (Perl || Python) && R && Awk && (C++ || Java) && *SQL*. On top of that, candidates have to be highly motivated, have nice publications, work in a collaborative environment, have good communication skills (See Appendix I).

I once looked at a postdoc bioinformatics job ad with my colleague who is an experienced bioinformatician. We only fulfill only 7-8 out of 10 requirements. I mentioned this to a senior researcher. He fulfills all the requirements but the job can't afford to pay him. He thinks that what is most important is the ability of the candidate to learn any skill quickly.

What is your take on this?