If you are a member of any research community you know very well who the relevant people are.  And if you know your stuff you can find out within five minutes if the person across the table know theirs.  Back then, we had hiring pipelines from university to the personnel department (it wasn&#x27;t called Human Resources yet), no recruiters were involved, and scientific personnel was interviewed by scientists.<p>That said, it gets problematic when you attempt to set down procedures.  At California community colleges, it seems, the candidates must have PhDs in the subjects that they are going to teach.  That&#x27;s fine.  But no one can keep up with all the schools from faraway countries, some are legit, many others are not, and they have stopped trusting the interviewers to check if the candidate&#x27;s PhD is legit.<p>So now every applicant has to prove degree equivalency.  They don&#x27;t know where Timbuktu is and pretend it&#x27;s OK not to know where Paris is!  You&#x27;d think the quality of candidates went down a few notches because anyone with a legit degree from a well-known school will be offended and refuse to spend money on the accreditated accreditator of degrees to be permitted just to apply.