I think the biggest give-away from the article and from the comments written here is that companies neglect recruiting as a chance to generate positive brand im

I think the biggest give-away from the article and from the comments written here is that companies neglect recruiting as a chance to generate positive brand impressions and in general, use it for marketing. If people walk away from your interviews feeling disappointed or mistreated there's a good chance they won't recommend or advocate for that company in the future. You'd think spending some executive muscle to smoothen out the warts in the process would be beneficial to any company trying to recruit smart people. But I guess having regular engineers or other employees with whatever ineptitudes in empathy or social skills won't be fixed by somebody telling them to "be sensible and nice." If that's how they were treated and think it's ok to treat others the same way, that's how it will be.