As a counter example, a recruiter once called me asking if I could "put the angular in outlook," recognizing this as total nonsense I said, "Sure that's something I could do" knowing that I would be able to talk to the team looking to hire and ask them for clarification.
It ended up being one of my favorite contracts; I was able to be part of an industry changing technology platform. Had I said that I didn't have any experience putting angular in outlook, its doubtful any of that would have come to fruition.
The lesson I learned here is when I'm hiring to make sure I don't eliminate good candidates with bad requirements and as a candidate I'm inclined to say "yes" to non-technical recruiters even when I know 100% that its impossible.
Half the battle is "beating requirements out of users" as I like to put it. This bullshit of trying to bait people into lying is just wasting everyone's time. I hope it leads to them ruling out a lot of really good candidates (eg, honest people who won't answer the ad because they've never heard of 'MOVA').
And before someone counters with "you should be flexible", I consider myself unfit for a position if I've never even heard of something they list on the want ad. If I found out they intentionally made up something just to trip people up, that's a big red flag for me. Who knows what other bullshit they'll try to pull once you're actually working for them.
It ended up being one of my favorite contracts; I was able to be part of an industry changing technology platform. Had I said that I didn't have any experience putting angular in outlook, its doubtful any of that would have come to fruition.
The lesson I learned here is when I'm hiring to make sure I don't eliminate good candidates with bad requirements and as a candidate I'm inclined to say "yes" to non-technical recruiters even when I know 100% that its impossible.