@White Knight: I didn't say that I agreed with the concept, just stating where they're coming from....
I can really see the advantage to pilots being interviewed by other pilots, with no HR around to justify their own existence, I really can. But I can also see that these days there's a plethora of freshly trained fATPL's out there trying to get a job and someone has to decide which few get in.
How would you try to examine those essential piloting skills (and I don't mean the trained skills, I mean the intrinsic qualities that make a bloody good pilot)? How would you separate the trained responses and techniques from the built-in common-sense?
(By the way, I don't work as HR, never bloody will thank you very much...but I would like to simply play devil's advocate and at least demonstrate why they do what they do. "Does it work?" is a completely different question.....)