I worked for a German startup too and our main problem was not vetting interviewees but finding people who want to interview at all. In the five year history of the company I think only one single person was hired who was not already friends with someone at the company.

Other people just never applied. I remember manning the booth at one of those college campus events and it was very lonely. I probably talked to three students that day. Nobody followed up with us. I even had the distinct feeling that students avoided eye-contact with us and made beelines for the booths of the big established companies.

In the end, our hiring interview process for interns was 'do you want to work for us? yes? you're in' and for full-time applicants it was simply non-existent. I think in the last three years we did not interview a single person.

I often wondered why that is but I have never found a good answer. In the end it worked out for us. The company was acquired by Google.

Still, I would have liked to have some applicants and interviews once in a while because I keep reading so much about them and I wanted to practice being an interviewer to avoid pitfalls as described in the article.