I think this is a def improvement on the process and it would appear it was company driven. Further, I am encouraged that there could be some tweaking to the process. When I've spoken to some of the guys in the cubicles they've expressed their displeasure/disappointment with the process including total disregard for any current company seniority holder input -- I don't think there's a single pilot that liked HR (and specifically the labor attorney who was in charge of hiring...) running the entire hiring show.
Having said that, I would be interested if there were any other forces/variables/metrics, etc... that may have contributed to this change. There was a bubble some years ago of guys that were hired that spiked the number of discipline cases for a given hire group. "Hmmm??!?!.... interesting"... I opined, but I never heard anything of it, other than it was definitely a definable group that got hired during a specific period.