A friend of mine has been trying to hire a new employee for her department in a medium-sized org. After advertising several times with few applicants, and a couple of rounds of interviews, the new employee is less than great. Then she discovered there were other applicants ... Among them was someone she knows personally, who has a spot-on CV, loads of experience, lives locally and would be the perfect person for the job. So she goes to HR to ask why that application was never sent through to her dept. The answer – she didn't score well.