I use interviews to evaluate a whole lot more than just hire/no-hire. I'm looking to understand what role someone is going to play in the organization, and to

I use interviews to evaluate a whole lot more than just hire/no-hire. I'm looking to understand what role someone is going to play in the organization, and to help understand which team a person we're likely going to hire will be a best match for. We organize our interview loops around this, and a critical part of the conversation in the debrief is role and team matching - not just a hire/no-hire decision. Plus, we use this time to provide feedback to whoever the hiring manager is about the candidate and potential future team member, which streamlines more than just headcount. Finally, the interview loop is an opportunity to manage cronyism. While we've got a lot of people I trust to refer exclusively strong candidates, I don't trust a single one to make fiat decisions. There's a human element to giving someone that level of decision making authority, and without sharing gory details - I've benefitted from having committee decisions in this situation. Managing the feelings of referrer's getting their candidates rejected in a hard problem. I've dealt with that in the past a number of ways but don't have a working theory, other than "it's a job, people make mistakes, and hiring is fit and timing as much as it is about technical prowess".