> Apart from getting a candidate to actually pump out some code, even trivially, we don't really have a way to de-facto verify that the person says they can do what they say they can do, short of a personal reference from someone, say, in the company already that knows and has worked with the person in the past.
And it's enough for someone with good social skills to get a great recommendation without skills.
True, yes. Although in this case, I am referring to perhaps a software engineer (who you already know to be good since he is there and in the company and on the team) who would personally vouch for someone else's skills. At least in a case like that, I have trust that their vouching for someone else is legit.
But this tends to be rare in practice, of course, because the pool of potential people being hired is very large.
And it's enough for someone with good social skills to get a great recommendation without skills.