Yeah, professional HR folks are a crapshoot, try to get whatever gouge there is. When I was a manager of a very technical department at a large corporation, I did all of my own interviews after I figured out that the HR folks would send me mostly "quota fillers" without much regard for technical or people skills. Fortunately, the nature of my group (overseas contracts in potentially hazardous areas) gave me the authority to overide HR on any hire...most managers didn't have that luxury, that had to take what they were given.