You, sir, are awesome...

It is inevitable that some fraction of the world believes themselves to be God’s gift to mankind. It is also inevitable that 99.9 percent of those people are, in fact, terrible at the skill that supposedly sets them apart from the rest of mankind. I will leave a 0.1 percent margin of error for those who are exactly as awesome as self-advertised…but let’s be real. They wouldn't be applying to the types of positions for which I am recruiting, and I am therefore unlikely to meet them.

I was planning on writing a general post about how awesome the average person thinks they are (and are inevitably not), but one applicant popped into my head as I was writing, so I'll tell you about him and save the generalities for another time.

This particular gentleman applied for an entry-level production position.

But first, some background context: In all cases, we are transparent regarding pay scale for candidate positions. It's up to you to distill the provided information and use your exceptional qualifications to figure out what your maximum pay rate could be prior to applying.

Pro tip: don't apply if you think the high end of the pay range is still too low. I’m not going to increase it for you.

Anyway, this applicant called in shortly after submitting his application online (credit where credit is due: bonus points for the initiative). When I answered his call, though, I got as far as pulling up his application to confirm which position he was applying for before the self-aggrandizing started:

Candidate: I ran my own department at X Company for six years at 150 percent. In eight hours, I could do 18-20 hours of work. After I left, they had to hire three people to do what I was doing, and they still can't figure it out. I refurbished all of their parts 'cause they didn't know how...

Now, I admit it isn’t very polite to tune someone out after he went to the trouble of cold-calling you for another run at a position he has applied for. In my defense, though, I was distracted by several of the self-contradictory “facts” he tossed into the opening salvo. Seeing as how I am definitely not as awesomely qualified to work them all out AND still pay attention to the firehose on the other end of the phone, my poor, feeble brain had to make a decision to pay attention to one thing or the other. Ergo, the rest of his diatribe disappeared into a fog of background noise as I worked my pen frantically.

First, he did not work at X Company for six years. How do I know this? Because my company hired him to work at X Company not quite four years before (funnily enough, by the coworker I sit next to at the office). He must've forgotten that he worked through us as a contractor before he was hired on permanently at that company. To really confuse the issue, his resume listed dates of employment from July 2017 - February 2022. Last time I checked, that's not quite 5 full years. Math skills = not great.

Presumably, if he cannot do simple addition/subtraction, I should not have expected much out of more advanced mathematical topics. I don’t know how he was calculating the "ran the department at 150 percent" bit, but the way I calculate it, if he was basing the 150 percent on the amount of work he could get done in a day, 150 percent of an 8-hour shift is 12 hours of work. Not 18 to 20 hours of work.

Oh, and let me also say: If you needed to hire three people to replace you, arguably you were working at 300 percent. But maybe that’s (again) just my version of math.

Whatever way you want to calculate it, the guy is still batting zero.

Back to our phone conversation.

Me: Based on your pay expectation and the exceptional experience you describe, I do not feel the specific position for which you applied will be a match. It is far too menial for your experience level, and, as such, the pay falls drastically short of what you are expecting. I have made detailed notes on what we discussed and what you are looking for and will reach out if I come across something I feel would be a match.

On a lark, I checked this guy's file a few months later. There was an update indicating he had (unsuccessfully) applied for (yet) another entry-level position.

No doubt the rest of us would have drawn a certain kind of conclusion regarding his qualifications But, being a reasonable person, I sternly remind myself of the 0.1 percent chance that you, sir, are awesome...