# Stupid Questions

By [Corporate Heretic](https://paragraph.com/@corporate-heretic) · 2025-05-24

jobsearch, career, questions, stupidquestions

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1190257d5b3fbf4c59f4497ef1efc239.png)

As I slog through the job search like an Ice Age animal sinking slowly into the La Brea Tar Pits (shoutout to the George C. Page Museum—love that place), there’s one thing that’s been really getting under my skin:  
  
The “filter” questions.  
  
You know the ones.  
  
“Do you have 7+ years of experience with \[Insert oddly specific platform here\]?”  
  
“How many years of experience do you have in the Custom Colored Hot Dog Bun Industry™?”  
  
Sure.  
  
You’re trying to weed out candidates so your Talent Acquisition Team doesn’t have to read every resume.  
  
Sounds reasonable in theory.  
  
But here’s the thing:  
  
It’s the questions you’re asking that make the whole system dumb.  
Let’s walk through it:  
  
Let’s assume you really do need someone with five years of experience in colored hot dog buns.  
  
Okay.  
  
So you put that question in the filter. What do you think happens?  
  
1\. People who don’t have that experience click YES anyway and hope you look at the rest of their resume.  
2\. People who actually read the question think, “This is idiotic,” and move on.  
3\. And spoiler: You’re probably going to have to look at the resume anyway.  
So now, instead of getting the best candidates, you’re filtering for the ones who either click YES reflexively or don’t care about your system enough to take it seriously.  
  
And here’s the tough love part:  
  
You’re probably attracting the wrong type of people.  
Why?  
  
Because the most talented people I’ve met are platform-agnostic.  
They understand core concepts.  
  
They move between systems, platforms, and industries with ease.  
They adapt.  
  
They learn.  
  
They build things that work.  
  
Meanwhile, the platform-locked folks—the ones with exactly 6.5 years of experience with the software you think you need?  
  
They freeze the moment something doesn’t fit the dropdown menu.  
  
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating:  
  
Very specific experience ≠ Talent.  
  
It’s often just narrow conditioning.  
  
I know that’s uncomfortable to hear.  
Especially if you’ve made a whole career off of being the “Excel guy” or the “Adobe Stack Queen.”  
  
But let’s be honest:  
  
“That guy may be a genius with X, but I bet he can’t do Y like I can…”  
…is the kind of thing people say when they’re not actually good at either one.  
  
So here’s my advice, from one tar pit crawler to another:  
  
Ditch the overly specific questions.  
Ask broader ones that let talented people tell you what they’re capable of.  
Or better yet, don’t ask anything. Just read the resume. You’ll survive.  
  
And if you really think someone can’t handle your bun-coloring operation because they haven’t used your exact platform? You probably don’t understand the platform—or the person—you’re looking for.  
  
But what do I know? I’m not one of you question-asking Masters of the Universe.  
  
Thankfully.

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*Originally published on [Corporate Heretic](https://paragraph.com/@corporate-heretic/stupid-questions)*