2. While I said the goal was to hire the best candidate, this was as compared to someone who is just barely better than not filling the position. Hiring a top 5 candidate is also very good. The argument in GP was (paraphrasing) "I know people that aren't good programmers but they can manage to do little changes to existing code therefore you shouldn't give interview problems these dummies can't solve."
How, exactly, would you do that?
Say you open a new position and you get 100 resumes a day, every day, until you shut down the role and pick someone.
How are you hiring the best candidate overall?
How long are you waiting for "the best"?
How many resumes are you really evaluating per day? With 100 coming in, how do you know you didn't miss "the best" one?