[dragonwriter]

> Does this mean the first two pages are filled with even better people?

In many public sector jobs, it would mean the top ranks of hiring lists are filled with preference-category candidates, the most common of which (and the one with strongest preference boost in most systems) is veterans preference.

[logfromblammo]

Exactly this.

And this particular office was required to interview candidates in the order they appeared on the candidate list.

They can't get rid of the veteran's preference, either, because the military-industrial complex is a massive jobs program for people who have 20 years of experience with skills that are juuust short of entirely worthless outside of the military or military-associated companies. If you're a maintenance mechanic for a model of aircraft that only one government flies, and it has no civilian version....

Then it's time to use the preference points.

[dragonwriter]

Solving the problem that military pay and post-service direct benefits (retirement pay, etc.) inadequately compensates for opportunity cost by making hiring in the rest of government (states as well as federal) less efficient rather than addressing it more directly seems to be a decidedly overcomplicated and suboptimal solution.