Ok, interviewing has a lot of merit. I won't disagree with that. But also, you can't disagree with the fact the interviewing can lead to choosing someone based on personal preferences and predudices. EVERYONE is predjudice, and EVERYONE discriminates. Lets not pretend on this one. I'm not saying everyone is a racist who hates people that are different than themselves, but we ALL discriminate, we start at a very very early age!!! It's a natural human characteristic. We perfer people who are similar to ourselves, and as an interviewer, given the same backgroud we would choose the individual who is most similar to us, or who has the most traits that we identify with. This is for the most part, unconscious, we know we like one person more than another, even when we don't even exactly know why. In an interview, most times, the interviewer will prefer the candidate that they LIKE the most, assuming all else is equal. And lets not pretend that there are rarely cases where all else is equal. Ok, in your highly specialized example, it may not be the case, but for MOST positions, there are a number of highly qualified candidates, ALL of which would be more than capable of doing the job. Since these are the vast majority of cases, I think Gato is making many valid points that are being disregarded based on a very specialized situation. In these case, in normal cases, where you have a thousand qualified applicants, and a hundred people who exceed all your expectations, and 10 who you might actually interview, the decisoin comes down to who the interviewer(s) LIKE the most. This has been alluded to, but not explicitly stated. Good fit, able to adjust, get along with other employees, sociable, etc etc. In other words, someone you like, someone that YOU could maybe even consider to be a friend, someone like YOU. Why? Because we ALL discriminate, and we all have our predjudices, and we all would choose the candidate that is most similar to our notions of ideal based on those predjudices assuming all else is equal (and in many cases, even when all else isn't equal). And, no doubt, in most cases there are numerous candidates applying for a position where this IS the case, all else IS equal! This is a very large economy, to make this argument generalize from recruiting engineers to recruiting anyone in the economy is a big jump. I'm pretty sure engineers make up a very small part of the economy, as do ALL these specialized positions that would require such rigorous standards of screening. In most jobs, a heart beat is sufficent, more than sufficent. Hell, in most cases the degree and the experience is irrelevant as well, and we all know this! There are some cases where the degree and previous experience matter, but for the most part, and for most positions, it just doesn't!
Everybody would like to think that they 'made it' on their own, but, unless you win a high-dollar powerball lottery, you haven't. Every decent job we've ever had comes from knowing someone...unless you graduated college, and then it depends upon what school you went to and the grades you got. These are the facts. Believe them, or not, and debate them, or not, it all comes down to background.
I just didn't really agree with Gato's "unless you go to college" statement. It helps in a relative way, but still, it's who you know, not what you know in most cases.