Interestingly enough, I sort of had this exact experience today as a non-looking potential candidate. This is why also I say above "still calls for HR competence" -- if, for example, you are going to sell your company in a phone conversation as made up of SMEs, tech experts, field engineers, etc., you really need to be sure that your target fits one of those bills.

Honestly, I would love to be considered an SME. However, as someone who has worked operations-side, handles lots of tickets on a daily basis and needs to handle many and varied projects as they come up, frankly I don't have enough time to deep-dive into SCOM, Cisco, VoIP, AD, SolarWinds, etc. -- and then don't get me started on hardware with HP, Dell, EMC and the like. Sure I can be an SME on these but, probably, only at the detriment of many other technologies and tasks that I already need to use every day.

Message to HR and recruiters everywhere -- if you need SMEs, great, but you really need to parse those resumes before calling me. Just because I know how to set up an IP phone, does not make me a guru on Cisco VoIP implementation!