Bora Bora wrote:And yes, if you apply the standards that are in place in the States, you will hire (or hope to hire) the better candidate. I too used those standards for hiring, but as you know there are no guarantees anywhere that the choice you make is the best choice. They could be very qualified, but it isn't until they are in the work place that you find out what kind of an employee they are, aside from qualifications.
Speaking of interview process, especially for technical, I still believe that HR should be in the last step after interviews by to-be-direct-superior or some other person who understand well the skills & experience.
There are many cases where people can't express clearly or having not a perfect communication skills. Meanwhile the HR has no idea anyway what the candidate is talking about. But the candidate has actually more to offer in the work and probably could communicate fluently when speaking with "the same language" (to interviewers who understand the skills/experience/requirements in detail).
Once, I hired one staff for my team who can't communicate well (limited English), but since we talk "the same language" he in fact could deliver the works fast and higher than expectation. He's probably the best in the team. If HR was involved when interviewing, he would've failed in the first place. We're small technical team/company, HR was only for paperworks.
I'm not saying HR is not required, at least in technical field. But attitude, personality, etc (soft-skills) have no relevant anymore these days. People lies, make BS, and kiss-up. The right interviewers ("the same language") will know if he's really skillful or just plain BS. If the candidate is full of BS, then don't bother to be interviewed further by HR. In that case, HR jobs will be much easier