I would find it suspicious as well, but consider this: People who are great at their job are hard to find and expensive. People who will eventually be great at their job are a lot, lot cheaper, though still hard to find. If you can hire someone before they realize how good they will be, you can save a lot of money and fill a position immediately.

I haven't actually figured out how to find those people, though I have hired at least 2 of them... And hired a few others that looked like they might be, but weren't. (A third coder comes to mind that ended up not working out, but I think we made mistakes and they got in their own head. I think they would have been great otherwise, hence 'at least 2'.)