I think you're misunderstanding the question. It sounds to me like they're asking about named entity recognition[1], which is a bit more involved than just having to write a parser (unless you're crazy enough to try parsing it by hand). And it's certainly more involved than I would expect someone who works in Developer Relations to have to answer.

The reality of the situation is that the author should probably have just taken the question that the interviewer was a techie who didn't know how to ask about soft skills.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_entity_recognition