How often do job listings say they require a certain type of BA or MA, but they will secretly accept others?

I imagine that the number of people who respond to the advert will dictate how the company will shortlist. If they have a lot of applicants then they will be probably use that criteria to shortlist and only call to interview those with stated qualification. If they only get a few applications then they will be more willing to widen the criteria and start looking at the sort of people in your examples.

It’s often there to rule out people who aren’t qualified for the job and doesn’t have demonstrable competence in the field. Others are generally accepted if your work experience shows experience or competency related to the experience.

It would be an interesting stretch to see how you could equate History of Sexuality to competency in Architectural History without out having either a second degree. Not to say that you couldn’t have done enough reading to have the equivalent to a master’s in architectural history, but how you would demonstate that in a resume without specific work experience would be a challenge. I run into this challege as I am posting for other positions at work. I don’t have an MBA, but have a business undergrad degree. My work experience is in advertising, but with this company is in data management. I’ve done a lot of reading on social media, networks, and community management, and have taught internal classes on the subject. I have a natural bent towards compliance related issues, and would thrive with that. However, because I don’t have experience, I would have to take a 50% pay cut to be hired into one of those positions at an entry level.

@BarnacleBill Fair enough. I sorta threw in the sexuality thing randomly. But part of the issue is that right now, unless Princeton’s site isn’t trustworthy, there are no programs in the US for architectural history. None. You can create one independently, you can have it as a focus, but there’s no pre-existing program for popping out architectural historians. So that really dampens your ability to have that on a diploma.

University of Cincinnati’s DAAP, University of Kentucky, Harvard, all have masters degrees that would meet the qualification for Architectural History.

Most jobs that post minimum requirements toss any resumes that don’t meet their criteria.

It’s getting past HR that’s the problem. If you can get your resume directly into the hands of the person who is hiring, you stand a better chance. But HR follows the letter of the law, and I don’t believe they are allowed to bend the rules. Also they don’t really know the position, so they can’t bend the rules the way the actual posters could.