Elon Musk has long been lauded as one of the greatest minds of our generation, rethinking and tinkering with everything from automobiles and space travel to energy efficiency.

What he did Wednesday night was no exception: the Tesla Motors and SpaceX mastermind breathed new life into the classified ad, making it simultaneously more 2015 and nerdier.

Musk sent a series of tweets letting his 2.9 million followers know that he was hiring for “a super high priority” project, Autopilot, Tesla’s autonomous-vehicle division.

So what kind of person is Musk, in his new unofficial role as Digital Human Resource Disruptor, looking to hire? Someone “hardcore” into software, that’s for sure. Someone who hasn’t necessarily had experience with cars, as of yet. Someone who’s willing to go through the trouble of e-mailing sample work to an address he’s provided. And, most dauntingly, someone who’s going into this knowing they will be interviewed by Musk himself, whom, if hired, they would report to directly.

The tweets, unsurprisingly, kicked up some attention on the ole social network, and Musk himself responded to a few questions about the positions. He explained that he’d accept applicants from anywhere, in one tweet, joked with Box C.E.O. Aaron Levie that his pitch “sounds perfect,” and told tech parody persona Startup L. Jackson that he’d be willing to put up with his swearing.

The hiring spree may have been slightly out of character for the usually measured billionaire. But maybe Musk was feeling particularly out-of-his-shell and into-the-limelight leading up to his appearance on prime time, which was just a week away from last night. Musk is slated to make a cameo on the Thanksgiving episode of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, airing next Thursday.

They say fame changes people, and if that, for Musk, means he’ll get publicly aggressive about finding cool engineers who are into automating his Teslas, well, we’ve seen worse.