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I applied for a job that had a 5 year or more experience requirement and some other required and ideal experience requirements. Since I had the main requirements and most of the ideal, I applied and got contacted almost immediately to setup a phone interview time in the coming week. A couple days later I got an email that the original posting was cancelled and reposted. They said the interview was still on, but that I would need to reapply to the new posting to continue in the process. When I did reapply, I noticed that the experience requirement had dropped from 5 to 3 years.

My general question is how should I interpret that? Was there too few who applied, or is this a price shopping situation, or something else?

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    Both too few applicants or price shopping are reasonable justifications for that course of action. Without being privy to the internal workings of that specific company our guess is as good as yours. As a guess though I'd say too few applicants is a more likely cause. HR with a policy that defines a minimum number of interviews for a hire may also require reapplication rather than porting over the existing application. However that is entirely conjecture.
    – Myles
    Aug 2, 2018 at 16:01

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My general question is how should I interpret that?

You could always ask them in the interview, if you really want to know. In general, though, I don't think it really matters why they did it.

Conduct the interview as you otherwise would have. Ask for a salary that you think is fair. At the end of the day, they'll either hire you or they won't, but as long as you stick to your own values (whatever they may be) then you'll end up where you want to be.

(That is to say, you'll either get the job and the price that you want, or you'll dodge a bullet from a company that wasn't prepared to pay you what you're worth anyway.)

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I'd interpret this as a price shopping situation, they could be thinking that they could find a lower priced candidate by lessening their requirements. That being said, if the position you applied for never changed regardless of the experience requirement, just take the interview as you would before the change.

Never sell yourself short though, as you already have an idea of what a fair wage for you is. If they end up giving you a lowball offer, you can always walk out and find another place that actually recognizes what you're worth.

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Just interpret it as a paperwork screwup. They probably either wound up with too few candidates or couldn't meet the salary requirements that some of the higher end were looking for, and priced themselves out of the market.

Go in, have a commanding interview, and get the job.

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As others have said, it could have been a price-shopping or applicant quantity situation. However, the reg flag for me is that perhaps the work involved in this position is being positioned to someone who is more entry-level (junior). If you have 5 years experience, you might want to do some more complicated tasks than would be given to someone who has half your experience. If this is a concern for you (it would be for me), I would recommend asking about it so you set the proper expectations.

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What it most likely means (all we can do is guess) is that they're not terribly excited about the applicant's credentials for those who have applied (including yours unfortunately) and are opening up the job posting to a broader pool of candidates.

However, you still have as fair a shot as anybody in the interview believe it or not. And... if they didn't want you, they'd cancel the interview.

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