I feel the need to add a very important point to your third paragraph. Most times these interviews persist even if you have all of those. And what is worse, they are performed by HR people. And I'm sorry, but... wtf does a socials major in HR know about a highly technical and specialized engineering job? Nothing.
I have a PhD on Embedded device security and last time I went through 3 interviews with HR people before I ever got to speak to an engineer. 90% bullshit questions.
The point of the HR people is to weed out the people who are blatant liars and misfits. They should simply record your responses to trivial technical questions and pass along a score or something for consideration by a more qualified person. You have to imagine that every job gets tons of applications from people with zero experience or credentials, and you don't want engineers wasting time on that.
I can imagine how 1 meeting with HR would help weeding out people for junior and early senior positions with little requirement in terms of CV. You could get a couple thousand applicants there. For sure.
However, I can not imagine a situation that would ever call for 2 or more meetings. Nor can I visualize any circumstance where a meeting with HR would help with highly specialized position hiring.
Once your job description calls for 5+ years of experience, a master's or even a PhD, maybe a certificate or two and even publications on the field, there should not be more than a couple hundred applicants. Not even a hundred to be honest. And every one of those claims can be verified by manual online searches or automated tools. Furthermore, the only way of verifying the applicants actually know about those subjects is a meeting with a fellow engineer.
Just because a job listing demands specific requirements doesn't even remotely mean the applicants will be qualified. Anyone can generally apply to anything, especially in this industry which is so eager to say anyone can get in regardless of qualifications. I agree that one screener should be enough, but maybe it happens twice on occasion because the authorized person is on vacation and they don't want to leave you hanging or something.
>And every one of those claims can be verified by manual online searches or automated tools.
No it can't. There is no central registry of every graduate in the world, and even if there was it would be expensive to have a subscription. If it was cheap to do background checks on everyone, it would be done up front instead of after they decide to hire you.
I have a PhD on Embedded device security and last time I went through 3 interviews with HR people before I ever got to speak to an engineer. 90% bullshit questions.