[mrgoldenbrown]

Having a good resume with skills A,B and C: 5-10pts.

Interview confirms that your resume wasn't full of BS: 10-20 pts

You can perform skills A,B,C on a whiteboard or laptop interview session: 20-50 pts

1 year of seeing you exhibiting skills A,B, and C under real world conditions and interacting with other people: 100-300 pts

No matter how unfair this seems, if you have the same skills as someone in my network, they have an almost impossible to overcome advantage in my hiring equations.

[dspillett]

I wouldn't say that was unfair. Ability in the right areas, demonstrated first hand, is a perfectly valid filter and the ranking you give it with your scoring system seems fine to me (unless the difference between the low and high ends is dependent on how much you like them!).

Yes you might lose someone who could be a star, but no system is perfect.

Hiring someone just because you know them is simply wrong, but giving them a chance because they've shown you an aptitude relevant to the position should not be seen as unfair IMO.