It seems to me anecdata suggest the average hiring process lets through only a few duds. It often feels to me like people are using that as a justification of

It seems to me anecdata suggest the average hiring process lets through only a few duds. It often feels to me like people are using that as a justification of the quality of their hiring practice. What's interesting is hiring practices vary greatly across the board but mostly in aggregate seem to produce this "we only ever got a few duds" result. My hypothesis has now shifted to "most people can do most jobs". Or to restate it "There are only a few duds. Period. And hiring processes produce mostly random results. That's why we see a few duds come through."