It is true that you will almost never work with somebody who interviewed you.
In some ways, this is absolutely terribly for hiring. I worked in a part of Google where domain specific knowledge was key, and it was next to impossible to hire people because nobody on our team could interview them "officially". So we'd pre-screen people with the knowledge we needed, and then pass them off to others to officially interview. They would almost invariably fail, because their non domain-specific knowledge was not in the top 1% or whatever it takes to pass a generic interview. So we were left with the choice between hiring contractors, or training somebody internal who could leave at any time. We hired contractors.
EDIT: See the sibling comment regarding the homebrew author. This situation was exactly like that. Imagine wanting to hire somebody to make an internal package manager, and not being allowed to hire the author of one of the most popular package managers because his whiteboarding skills were lackluster, so he got a poor interview score from people that have no idea (or concern) what he does or what he's being hired to do.
> I worked in a part of Google where domain specific knowledge was key, and it was next to impossible to hire people because nobody on our team could interview them "officially".
When a company policy is so obviously broken in this way and there is no way to route around it then something is very broken.
Here's how it should work. You explain the issue above to someone above you and they either have the authority to get round it or they pass it on to someone who does.
If a policy is failing in such a profound way and nobody can change it this implies a level of organisational dysfunction that must be affecting multiple aspects of the company.
One way to route around it is to acquire a company with the needed expertise. However, it needs to be a large-ish company. There is some cutoff beyond which engineers from acquired companies do not need to re-interview for their jobs. It is somewhere between 10 person startup and Motorola, but I have no idea where.
I don't think a way to route around it for an individual position or candidate exists.
You should see if there's way to circumvent HR or even have them work with you on hiring candidates. At my company, all engineers are VERY involved in the hiring process when it comes to new additions to the team.
In some ways, this is absolutely terribly for hiring. I worked in a part of Google where domain specific knowledge was key, and it was next to impossible to hire people because nobody on our team could interview them "officially". So we'd pre-screen people with the knowledge we needed, and then pass them off to others to officially interview. They would almost invariably fail, because their non domain-specific knowledge was not in the top 1% or whatever it takes to pass a generic interview. So we were left with the choice between hiring contractors, or training somebody internal who could leave at any time. We hired contractors.
EDIT: See the sibling comment regarding the homebrew author. This situation was exactly like that. Imagine wanting to hire somebody to make an internal package manager, and not being allowed to hire the author of one of the most popular package managers because his whiteboarding skills were lackluster, so he got a poor interview score from people that have no idea (or concern) what he does or what he's being hired to do.