How about a points rating system, for instance, the actual experience is a pretty big one, so that would be worth the most, but if the person has less time, but

How about a points rating system, for instance, the actual experience is a pretty big one, so that would be worth the most, but if the person has less time, but experience with individual parts of the stack they could "earn their application" like such: Object - value experience - 50 CSS3 - 10 Photoshop - 10 Go - 10 And so forth, so instead of it being a blanket ban and saying "it's 2 years experience or feck off" you could be saying "we normally only accept applications with a minimum of two years experience, but make exceptions for talented applications with experience in the following technologies, please tick any which apply. Then you let the company know that while they don't meet the minimum requirements for length of employment, they did score over the points threshold for "alternative" applicants. Just an idea :)