Anyway, in my experience, the best approach to hiring is to acknowledge that HR is effectively a branch of the legal department, and that it exists for compliance reasons. They will figure out which applicants are complaint with whichever hiring practices they have determined have the lowest legal risk, but aren't really capable of figuring out how well qualified any applicant is to perform or learn the duties of the job. You're going to have to do that on your own, from the pool of approved applicants.
I've found working with applicants to make a design decision can be extremely insightful. Chose something that's at the edge of the applicants experience, either from a project the applicant is working on, or something you are working on that the applicant finds interesting, and see how well the applicant can ask you questions and perform general research. Look for applicants that don't just seek the answer to the specific question at hand, but those who want to figure out how to answer that type of question in general.