The "Wouldn't get hired" comment is pretty common -- in fact, an interview with Daniel Loeb about his multi-billion dollar fund ended with him saying something like "I couldn't get hired here. Bad grades in college, no MBA. If you want to get a job here, you have to start preparing when you're thirteen." (So once again, these guys are all using the same model).

Some funds have a program explicitly designed to hire people who 'wouldn't get hired' under normal circumstances: http://deshaw.com/articles/Alpha_2.pdf .