yeah sounds like they think you need mentorship and their team can’t provide that more than anything else. You maybe be knowledgeable but how much experience do you have. It’s very different to knowledge from a book than having experience with adapt to changing technology or dealing with stuff you don’t have any knowledge of. I can’t tell you how many people i had to turn down cause they could pass the cert test but could not walk me through how they would troubleshoot a problem. It was more if it’s this than do this and if we tried to go any deeper than that they kinda froze. Anyone with experience will tell you certs are a great start but they are only 1/3 of what you need.