Rarely have I ever seen a candidate be rejected by seniors or leads and still get the job even when the decision had to be argued until it was unanimous. Pretty much if a senior goes thumbs down, the decision has been made and the meeting is over.

Leads and CTOs especially have to be mindful of either not being part of the decision or being the last vote, as to not taint the results... which again, means that the most senior vote will flip a "yes" to a flat "no"

Discussing how many no’s it should take to reject a candidate is a worthwhile discussion. I can override specific no’s with good reason at my company, but not all companies have that.

My broader point is that this is a specific issue with the process we can iterate on. We don’t need to throw out the whole process.