Same, I've had colleagues do the same process to get a foot-in-the-door. It does work based on observation alone.

Oh, thanks. I've never seen that before for new college grads -- usually these big companies have a centralized hiring and interviewing and placement process for grads since that's so much more efficient.

Especially grad students tend to already have some work or research experience under their belt - meaning they don't necessary have to go through the meat grinder of "new grad" job listings.