For both the interviewing and dating analogies, OP overlooks the most critical detail that any good salesman could tell you: decisions are made by emotion and confirmed by logic. He barely touched upon the emotional aspect.
What could companies do to better employ emotional considerations?
First they must treat the recruitment process as a two way street. Why hire someone who will become unhappy or disillusioned and just leave? Yet companies continue to hide their underwear until after the candidate is hired. Do you really think they won't notice that you misrepresented yourselves?
They must also focus more on the people side of things. Take the candidate out for dinner or drinks. Invite the spouse. Take them to an event. You can learn just as much about each other as you can from a technical test.
I'm surprised companies don't do this much anymore. Have we gotten so technical that we forgot that we're human?
I've been in my current job for 10 years. One of the things that initially sold me on the company was that besides the technical stuff, they took time to get to know me as a person during the very long interview day. A bunch of us went out to lunch and chatted, back in the office we discussed everything from hobby projects to old work, etc.
Since they had flown me over 1,000 miles for the interview, people suggested some places to visit until my return flight two days later (I came up on Friday and left on Sunday) so I could see if I might like living in the area, etc...
And in the end I had a really good feeling about working for these guys that has pretty much persisted for the time I've been here.
Agreed - both interviewing and dating are trying to solve the same problem: "How to judge how people will be in the long term, after spending a small amount of time with them?"
No amount of tests or 20 questions can give unequivocal answers to these questions, especially as both interviewing and dating, although they pretend to solve the question in an objective manner, are really subjective in nature (i.e. what is good for one person/company may not be good for the other).
What could companies do to better employ emotional considerations?
First they must treat the recruitment process as a two way street. Why hire someone who will become unhappy or disillusioned and just leave? Yet companies continue to hide their underwear until after the candidate is hired. Do you really think they won't notice that you misrepresented yourselves?
They must also focus more on the people side of things. Take the candidate out for dinner or drinks. Invite the spouse. Take them to an event. You can learn just as much about each other as you can from a technical test.
I'm surprised companies don't do this much anymore. Have we gotten so technical that we forgot that we're human?