Imagine in any other industry, where the candidate mentions
irrelevant job experience, and expect that to be the criteria for acceptance into the job.
For example, an actor applying for a role in a commercial might cite their side role in doing a theatrical production of hamlet for their community, but the interviewers (an advertising production agency) might only want to care how much professional experience they have shooting commercials.
Sure, these experiences in "unrelated" work might show qualities that could be applied to this job. But you aint paid for your broad and wide interests in the topic - you are paid on being able to implement some work/feature that somebody else told you to do. And in fact, if you require intrinsic motivation to actually perform well, you might end up being a liability to the team, rather than an asset - after all, if the work is boring, and you lack intrinsic motivation for it, you might slack off, or over-engineer it to make the work more interesting to you. Or you might end up being a difficult person to work with for other team members because you sit so far above them intellectually.
For example, an actor applying for a role in a commercial might cite their side role in doing a theatrical production of hamlet for their community, but the interviewers (an advertising production agency) might only want to care how much professional experience they have shooting commercials.
Sure, these experiences in "unrelated" work might show qualities that could be applied to this job. But you aint paid for your broad and wide interests in the topic - you are paid on being able to implement some work/feature that somebody else told you to do. And in fact, if you require intrinsic motivation to actually perform well, you might end up being a liability to the team, rather than an asset - after all, if the work is boring, and you lack intrinsic motivation for it, you might slack off, or over-engineer it to make the work more interesting to you. Or you might end up being a difficult person to work with for other team members because you sit so far above them intellectually.