One of the most common modern hiring "bureaucracy" I saw being applied in small companies/startup is the rule that candidates must be selected by their peers.

One of the most common modern hiring "bureaucracy" I saw being applied in small companies/startup is the rule that candidates must be selected by their peers. There are many reasons this policy is appealing. One is that there is a growing recognition that managers aren't meant the be too technical and gauging the technical skills is thus delegated to those people who actually know the tech (namely the devs). The other reason is that it's assumed that in order for a team to work well together you need people who like and respect each other, and this often means answering the question "would you like to work with this person?". This policy backfires in many ways. It entrenches the existing culture and often doesn't easily allow to raise the seniority level of an existing company. I've been in many interview where only junior members where perplexed about some minor shortcomings about the candidate but they were the majority and the general sentiment was that if the devs noticed a red flag, it must be because manager and senior staff focused too much on high level stuff that was easy to fake, but luckily the juniors caught the impostor!... I was looking in dismay how one good candidate after another got rejected. Fixing this kind of problem took a tremendous amount of effort.