Anyone ever worked in HR, please help me out here.

I've heard that in certain kinds of jobs, especially state, county, city government jobs, the employers have to interview a certain number of people for a position--even though it has already been decided who they are going to hire. (And IME, in state/county/city government, about 90-95% of the time they DO have somebody already picked out for the job.)

This used to really p. me off, especially when they schedule you for an interview and you have to travel a long distance--for nothing, since they already know they're not going to hire you anyway.

Can anybody give me the story on this?

BTW, I'm not job-hunting now, thank goodness.

but I do work for a hospital system that is part of the state. We do not have to interview a certain number of people, but we do have to advertise it in at least our listings and the state employment office listings, even if we know who we want.

Most of the times when I am asked to send a particular applicant, it is because they did the same job in the department, but left to raise a family and want to come back, or other similar situations. If they do ask for a certain applicant, they have to at least let me send them a "top 3 pool," and they have to provide a reason why they did not select the other 2. Our records are audited internally and externally, and if we cannot show acceptable reasons for why someone was selected over others, that is a serious problem, and we could get in major trouble with the EEOC over it. So HR really tries to monitor these situations, and if requested applicants don't meet the qualifications, we will NOT refer them to the department. If of the three, I would disagree with who is most qualified, well, then it is the manager's call, but we do try to emphasize that it's their neck on the line if an audit comes along.

Now the situation gets trickier when it comes to people who want to hire a foreign national. They must advertise the job in a certain number of places for a specific amount of time (I don't have these jobs, so I do not know the specific details, but I learned this info from the state employment office). I don't know if they have to interview anyone, but they do HAVE TO show that they were unable to find anyone local who was qualified for the job. In these cases, when they advertised the job only because they knew they wanted a foreign national, if they found someone local who was as qualified and knew they could not therefore hire the person they really wanted, the job is often canceled.