> Recruiting people does not work by doing laundry lists of questions asked by HR drones that don’t understand context or demand 10 years of experience in a technology that’s 8 years old. Five rounds of interviews, tests and exams where people have to recite algorithms by heart are pretty pointless.

I second that sentiment.

I've worked in places small and autonomous enough that the office manager would handle the admin of posting a job ad, passing on the CVs to the person who knew what their team was looking for in a colleague - note, a colleague, not a "new hire". The absence of an HR filtering layer left hiring decisions to those it most directly affected, but with the admin side handled by office managers (or in some cases COOs).

I've also worked in far larger places with heavyweight HR departments. Frustrating and backed by corporate policy (and as declared to shareholders) regarding recruitment processes. The question "Why can’t hiring be agile?" is worth exploring, I think.