I have also done it. None of the things you mentioned predict success. In fact, very little aside from basic hygiene is likely to predict success, which is what renders these purportedly meritocratic hiring processes so out of touch with reality.
The evidence simply does not support present hiring methodologies as predictive of successful business outcomes. Therefore, you should hire and invest in people who need jobs. The reason the increasingly widely accepted status quo of interview processes continues is essentially due to confirmation bias: companies want you to feel like you are part of a special, select team. In reality, we are not that much different from each other. The evidence suggests hiring people who need jobs and dispensing with the bs.
Where is the evidence that present hiring methodologies don't predict successful business outcomes? I recall seeing evidence re: resumes, but not on the overall process itself [1].
If this data is present (data showing that present hiring methodologies don't predict successful business outcomes), do you have data showing that hiring people who need jobs is any better? We /are/ different from each other -- as an example so obvious it borders on the ridiculous, people who have been programming for ten years will be much faster at it than people who haven't. At what point do you draw the line to state that people stop being different? If so, what data did you use to draw that line?
I understand the paradigm paralysis - we have been led to believe that having the best CS zombies in the world is what makes success, but it's just not true. Meanwhile, jobs aren't filled and the people who need them are suffering.
It's a nice catchall phrase for all kinds of discrimination that would be illegal if stated explicitly. If we call it a gut feeling or culture fit, it's suddenly legal.
Cannot ++ you enough.
In my experience, people prefer to surround themselves with those similar to them.
The same holds true for any software organization.
Just as it was important to people in the pre-1960s southern US that their children only go to school with children whose families they were "comfortable with." Somehow, they've since (somewhat) figured out how to adjust to their discomfort.
One of the cruelest ironies of the post-recession hiring environment has been how companies are much more interested in hiring those who are already employed.
