[NewsaHackO]

Yes, I didn't look at the replies until late, but you are correct. The invariant of the situation is that there are a large number of people who want 1-2 positions, and there are not enough resources in the company to interview and evaluate them all in person. My point is that when you remove measures like a performance on a project from play, and are forced to whittle down a group of applicants to an interviewable-sized group, people will start to pick increasingly "unfair" ways to do so. No one wants to risk hiring a person for a position who simply cannot perform at the level necessary for the job. If they don't have a project to separate the people who can perform versus the people who can't, then they have to use other markers to say why one person has a better chance of performing well than another, of which previous employer/alumni and references from trusted sources are by far the easiest ones.