Upwards of 90% of applicants for many roles - talking about external postings, it's usually only 50% for internal - have clearly (in my experience) not even actually read the job posting, let alone have an understanding of what the job would entail or any of the requisite experience to be successful in it.
Many of the remaining 10% have read enough they'll try to fake the requisite experience or understanding of it, but on the job would fail almost immediately (and not in a coachable 'oh yeah, we use bit x instead of y here', but in a 'have no idea how to use the calendar App we use, despite claiming years of hands on experience). Only a couple % of applicants for a public posting will have the actual experience and ability to do the job.
And that is before we start talking about fit with others/ability to work in the culture effectively, and other soft skills.
I've had candidates apply for senior Java developer positions that couldn't write out the most basic class structure on a white board while claiming 10 years of experience (like class Foo {}), candidates applying for engineering managing jobs that struggled with basic arithmetic, candidates applying for executive admin jobs that had no idea how to process an inbox at all (except to sort everything with a billion filters - except I needed them to, you know, actually figure out what needed to happen and sort out the junk, not categorize the junk for me to sort through), and a million other weird things like that. I had a lawyer who wasn't a lawyer once. That one I filed a criminal complaint against.
Sometimes it may be brain lock, but in many cases I think it was fluffery and 'fake it till you make it' thinking.
A large part of being a successful company is figuring out how to filter out the frauds/incompetents/won't actually fit or work outs, from the people who can get things done and can work with everyone who is already there without making a giant mess. It's surprisingly hard. Most don't do a good job at it.
Many of the remaining 10% have read enough they'll try to fake the requisite experience or understanding of it, but on the job would fail almost immediately (and not in a coachable 'oh yeah, we use bit x instead of y here', but in a 'have no idea how to use the calendar App we use, despite claiming years of hands on experience). Only a couple % of applicants for a public posting will have the actual experience and ability to do the job.
And that is before we start talking about fit with others/ability to work in the culture effectively, and other soft skills.
I've had candidates apply for senior Java developer positions that couldn't write out the most basic class structure on a white board while claiming 10 years of experience (like class Foo {}), candidates applying for engineering managing jobs that struggled with basic arithmetic, candidates applying for executive admin jobs that had no idea how to process an inbox at all (except to sort everything with a billion filters - except I needed them to, you know, actually figure out what needed to happen and sort out the junk, not categorize the junk for me to sort through), and a million other weird things like that. I had a lawyer who wasn't a lawyer once. That one I filed a criminal complaint against.
Sometimes it may be brain lock, but in many cases I think it was fluffery and 'fake it till you make it' thinking.
A large part of being a successful company is figuring out how to filter out the frauds/incompetents/won't actually fit or work outs, from the people who can get things done and can work with everyone who is already there without making a giant mess. It's surprisingly hard. Most don't do a good job at it.