In an ideal world I'd completely agree, but I have seen, oh so many times, HR doing a first pass of screening applicants - something that they're incredibly ill suited to do. And, later on, pushing for bizarre "culture fit" bar raising based on the company manual no less!

As a result of this we end up interviewing people who looked good based on key words, on their location, or seemingly glamorous background - none of which are important when it comes down to what they know, what they did, or what they want to do.

I've seen the same thing with poorly trained and non-technical hiring managers who either exclude developers from the hiring process altogether or overrule their comments based on their own agenda - "we have to hire now" - and so on.