This is true, but it’s more than that. I know most everyone on Tumblr is really, really young, and at this point I’ve been around the block so many times they’ve named the damn thing after me, so here’s some advice.
Most jobs put an absurd list of requirements so if for some reason they don’t like you, they can say, “Ah, Mary didn’t know how to trampoline slam dunk a volleyball into a basketball hoop, as is listed in the requirements, so even though this is an administrative assistant job, she’s right out.”
When the real reason they didn’t hire you is because it just wasn’t a cultural fit, or you spoke in a Bronx accent, or any other number of reasons. It doesn’t necessarily have to be discriminatory, though it often is — listing absurd requirements is just an easy out for the company even if it’s just a budgetary reason that the hiring doesn’t go through.
However, sometimes ridiculous requirements are listed because the job is being tailored to a specific person who already works there. Many companies have rules that any job must be first advertised outside the company before an internal candidate can be hired. I’ve been involved in this myself several times as the internal candidate. Everyone has unique skills, so the job description was literally just a listing of all the things I already knew how to do. The chances of anyone else having exactly my skill set, especially since I’ve been in IT for nearly 20 years now? Nada. These jobs you will never get because they aren’t for you, but they are hard to detect so apply away.
The desperation mentioned is also often at play, too. My last job (pre-CTO) I got somewhat for that reason, as I was not by the standards of the advertisement qualified for it, and I wasn’t really who the company was looking for. I’d never worked for a large-scale hosting provider previously, and had never worked with multiple large customers at once. I was missing other qualifications, too, but I happened to get interviewed as they just couldn’t find anyone else. As I (frankly) tend to do, I nailed the interview so hard they still can’t get it off the wall, and a few weeks later I was sitting in a spot a less ambitious person had unknowingly abdicated.
Mediocre or not, I excelled in that (very difficult) job and I only got it because I had the gumption to apply.