[reikonomusha]

As someone who has been a hiring manager for the last decade, I'm absolutely befuddled by the "tenure => competence" assumption.

Tenure doesn't weed out mediocrity by any stretch. In fact, the more tenure someone has, often the more difficult it is to determine from their resume alone whether they know anything.

[__d]

Time in the workforce doesn't indicate competence, but time at known employers can (since we're talking seniors here).

When you're hiring, you should know where you want to hire people from. Normally, you'll know someone there, or who used to be there, so you can do the unofficial check: "Hey, do you remember X who used to work in group Y at company Z? Should I hire them?" At worst, you can do a friend-of-a-friend check.

Of course, you should call their formal references as well, but their responses are normally going to range only from "yes" to "absolutely yes" (unless the candidate has messed up, and given a reference who will actually say "no").

Also useful: a short stint at a known-bad employer. This shows that the candidate recognized their mistake, and corrected it.

I'll normally only interview someone who I can't background if their resume looks super impressive and I've got no better options.