First, it explicitly recognizes the unique character of competent IT professionals by letting other competent IT professionals who will depend on the new team member decide who gets to join their team. Second, it exposes the potential recruits to the people with whom they are most likely to bond from the outset of the experience. The worst approach we've seen to recruiting was in a company we both worked for. This company had a formal, stated policy that it was better to hire individuals with some business background and teach them technology than to hire people with technical background and training. First, the approach puts the onus of hiring on the HR department and, sometimes, the hiring manager, rather than the team.
HR departments tend to be clueless.
Second, the qualified talent will run. But we still see a lot of dancing such as HR preliminary screens, handwriting, and personality tests, and a host of other nonproductive or counterproductive practices, usually centered around HR overinvolvement in the hiring process. The best practices involve HR in facilitating and scheduling interviews, presenting formal offer paperwork, negotiating rates with external search firms, and that's about it. And to do that effectively, they must be available 2437. The hiring managers and their teams should do everything else.