[freshfunk]

I see your point and do feel the same way. The problem (industry-wide) is that the process only allows for a glimpse of a candidate. Even if you're interviewing all day, you're probably only talking to each interviewer for 1 hr (or less) and evaluating many different aspects of them (technical, personality, motivation, etc). And this is supposed to speak for your whole career.

I do think there are false negatives through this process but that's the trade off, I believe, for efficiency. Considering how time consuming interviews are (for the interviewer), there has to be some ways of reducing the wheat from the chaff.

After all, many use a university degree (from a prestigious university) as an initial filter. However, I'm sure there are many talented people who don't have degrees. But when looking at the probabilities, your chances of finding a great candidate are significantly higher if you filtered on that degree.