Well, what I am trying to say is hard skills are not as favoured as soft skills (it is open to fresh grads after all). So even if you are many years at your current workplace and gaining experience in say, programming or accounting skills and knowledge, you might just lose out to a candidate just out from school who used to be an officer in the army and the captain of his CCA club.
To put it simply, they have a hard on for "leadership" qualities. The kind where you lead a platoon like in NS. So suppose you were a sgt or worse, a man during NS and now you are a manager at your workplace with 5-10 employees under you, you will still be at a disadvantage as you have not had an entire platoon under you before.