My recent hires are all just people I met at events. I'm told by people outside the company that they're all very happy workers.

We do not do technical interviews. We talk casually about past work and what people want to achieve. After hiring we usually find out they have a different skillset and then we find the right tasks to match experience vs. career path.

Knowing this works for my team I would never want to go back to full-time employment at a place with HR ever again. HR has become an insular group of "specialists" who do not deliver value to organizations, and often ruin them IMO.