In regards to the role of HR in hiring a candidate, I think it is a bit more complicated then you make it out to be. The problem is that a candidate won't just

In regards to the role of HR in hiring a candidate, I think it is a bit more complicated then you make it out to be. The problem is that a candidate won't just exist in isolation on the team he/she was hired to. There needs to be some representative of the rest of the company, outside of his/her project team and managers, to vouch for him/her. After all, this is a person that may be given building access, that will interact with other employees at company events, the cafeteria and the hallways. I don't know anything about the details of the test in the article, but I can imagine someone doing well in their technical interviews, but failing miserably on company fit. Maybe he (settling on a 'he' in this case) is a brilliant programmer but showed serious misogynistic tendencies when interviewing with a female HR person. Maybe something came out of his HR interview that revealed him to be a borderline psycho who could code well but was a troublemaker. Considering that it is HR that will have to deal with this person in the future if there are complaints against him, I think it is only fair that they set some baseline level of acceptability for candidates.