However, I can not imagine a situation that would ever call for 2 or more meetings. Nor can I visualize any circumstance where a meeting with HR would help with highly specialized position hiring.
Once your job description calls for 5+ years of experience, a master's or even a PhD, maybe a certificate or two and even publications on the field, there should not be more than a couple hundred applicants. Not even a hundred to be honest. And every one of those claims can be verified by manual online searches or automated tools. Furthermore, the only way of verifying the applicants actually know about those subjects is a meeting with a fellow engineer.
>And every one of those claims can be verified by manual online searches or automated tools.
No it can't. There is no central registry of every graduate in the world, and even if there was it would be expensive to have a subscription. If it was cheap to do background checks on everyone, it would be done up front instead of after they decide to hire you.