No genius allowed? You can still be creative

"I like your CV, but what I like more is that you have studied acting in a drama school. Engineers are all around, you know. We are not looking for a genius nor an inventor. We have products, and now we need to integrate as soon as possible one more person to our team to help improve the product."

That's what I was told at the end of a job interview by a manager. I still wonder nowadays what was the real meaning of that phrase. I can suppose that on one hand it meant that integrating in the company social texture would have been tough, and secondarily, that there would have been mechanical work to do, like testing, documentation and so on.

I can comprehend that the interviewer might suppose that belonging to a drama school would have made it easier for me to make friends (neither necessary nor sufficient condition, though), but I still don't see and don't understand the meaning of the not-being-a-genius requirement.

No need to say that genius or creativity, call it the way you prefer, is necessary at any stage of product life cycle. So, unable to understand the real meaning of that confidence ─shame on me for not clarifying─, today I believe that he simply couldn't manage to express what he really wanted to say: "We are looking for creative and brilliant solutions to our problems in order to enhance the value of the product, optimize human efforts and decrease costs of production".