it's not always HR people being unrealistic, alot of times they are just matching candidates based on criteria they are given. I don't blame the lady, she was given the task of finding candidates with these qualifications and what the job says you do and what you actually do are commonly 2 different things (especially on temp work.) i think alot of times it's just to weed out the potential negative / lazy candidates. let's be honest, if you have xx amount of knowledge in a certain field it's pretty lazy to not get your A+, net+, CCNA, etc. all fields, not just IT have various qualifications.

I'll never forget a temp job I got 5 or 6 years ago. I had maybe 6 mos experience and a 2 year CCNA course on my resume (I had not completed CCNA at that point) Got a call from a HR lady who really needed people, like, right now for a temp job in DC. She was reluctant though because she said she wasn't sure that I had enough experience to do the job. (luckily I'm a decent talker, and they really needed people.) The job was to do, and I'm not exagerating, unpack Dell monitors and hook them into the power supply / PC. No checking the computer, new monitor, blue port, move on. I can't complain, the job paid good and it wasn't really hard work. I was one of those "certs are useless" people until that day.