I think your assumption in the beginning is correct! People have no idea about hiring and just do what comes to their mind first: application, interview, get st

I think your assumption in the beginning is correct! People have no idea about hiring and just do what comes to their mind first: application, interview, get started. That is not a good way to hire. But then you start to make the same mistake these badly hiring people do: You think you need to do all the science by yourself. But actually there is a solution to most hiring problems as there is a solution to most programming problems. And there is a science who spents a lot of time and money of a lot of people to improve the methods available and to find models more applicable. You can even study that stuff in university and get a degree for that. So please, take that stuff seriously and do what everybody in a hiring situation should do: Learn what humankind already has available on the topic or pay someone who already did the learning! PS: Yes, when you start to find out enough about this topic, you will see it is quite boring. You solve problems like everywhere else, too. First you try to apply a model to the best of your knowledge and then you just use the methods connected to the model. Both, the models and the methods, can be found in a lot of text books and also online.