In my case, I'm not a recruiter, so I interview everyone they ask me to interview -- I've never played a role in the original vetting.
I think most large companies have a formalized system of initial screening -- which has been criticized for relying on keywords and such. It's done by HR. After that, there's a phone screen which is much like an in person interview -- the questions should be pre-written based on the resume and generally they are. In my company I've worked to write up large banks of questions w/answers and distributed them to people doing phone screens for this purpose, and I've used that in my own phone screens.
What people should do is formalize the interview process which helps in so many ways -- a repeatable process with repeatable questions lets you compare people across times and gives a lot of insight. It also helps reduce bias.
I do think that small companies tend to do a worse job that big companies with established HR practices. That's not only true for HR, it's true across the board. Young people who are inexperienced are going to make mistakes. Certainly there is going to be "culture" type bias in start ups and other small companies at least during the screening process. I wouldn't say that's too relevant for "Silicon Valley", as you have these issues in small businesses in every industry.