hmmm, how can you even try to "Don't waste time on things we don't care about" in your first application before you know their actual needs? when someone says he needs a wordpress expert how can anyone be sure that content creation abilities are not interesting
BTW, I want to know where are the awesome jobs he is talking about. Most jobs that I know require maintenance of old code or move graphics one pixel left and right or similar boring stuff. Very little actually interesting R&D is happening in the world and I were recruiting I am not sure I would prefer the awesome show-off over a gray predictable person.