This is great. All hiring should work like this. The issue with many companies is that they alienate good candidates and routinely waste a lot of time on bad candidates. Basically, you waste several rounds of interviews before the candidate even gets to talk to somebody that has decision power (or even a clue). It's very expensive to reject people late into the process. And it's stupid to have good candidates walk away from you because your process is prioritizing your convenience at the cost of their time.

The trick is dealing with the signal to noise ratio. If you have recruiters feeding you an endless stream of mediocre, vaguely buzzword compatible resumes, it's not feasible to stay on top of that. IMHO, that kind of process is in any case unlikely to produce good candidates other than by accident. I've interviewed plenty of people this way and you can end up wasting a lot of time like this. The way out is to fix the lead pipeline to be less desperate than that.

I work on the principle that the best people usually come in via your network and are highly employable. So, that puts the pressure on to act quickly and decisively when you come across a good reference. The next best thing is people applying to a job and reaching out. If they look remotely legit, talk to them. Ten minutes is enough to figure people out. This doesn't actually happen a lot. If you must use recruiters, make them work for a living and push back when they waste your time with a lot of poorly fitting candidates. Buzzword compatibility is not good enough. Make sure they can tell the difference between a good and a bad candidate.

There's no better way than selling good people on the notion of working for you than just escalating really quickly and having them talk to a decision maker. Have a quick call to verify key assumptions, fit, and expectation management (salary, skills, seniority, eagerness, etc.). First impressions matter. If that's all fine, immediately set up interviews with key stake holders and make an offer if everyone still agrees. Coding interviews don't really factor into this process. I don't use them and I decline to take them. If you've had multiple conversations and then still are wondering if the person can actually code, you messed up. Badly.

If you do have a coding interview as part of your process and you get people reluctant to take those, escalate and talk to them immediately. IMHO nothing qualifies a person more than being mature enough to walk away from a bad deal. Chances are that those are the best leads coming through your filters. And you can find out at the cost of a ten minute screening call.