[dlwj]

"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal name"

Once "art" becomes defined, it ceases to become art. The barista ceases to become important once a machine can replicate the exact results. The artist becomes useless once his or her method can be codified and repeated.

The method of choosing good engineers also becomes useless once it is defined because then that standard can be copied without regards to the traits it originally was trying to gauge. Pure arbitrary processes aren't great because of the lack of transparency that encourages nepotism, but neither is a purely mechanical approach that opens itself to becoming gamed.

A heuristic exchanges information for faster processing. When heuristics are passed around, the original information is lost. Almost everything we do is a heuristic though. 3 meals a day, brushing teeth everyday, etc... Is it better than nothing? Probably. Is it great? No. But everyone offering a "solution" isn't really offering a solution. They're just telling personal stories about what heuristic worked best for them.

The job interview process is quite similar to the friend making process. Not everyone is going to be your friend, and following scripts like saying hello every morning isn't going to do it either. It's just one of those things that are part of life.