That's what they tell people too. It's great if you just graduated from a formal CS program because the algorithms stuff is fresh in your brain. Whereas working 5-10 years in a boring bigcorp, doing CRUD apps will kinda make you more "dumb"
I did learn that in my last round of interviewing (about a year ago) that to play the game you need to review the junk that you'll never need to keep in your brain, that you know but don't have at command. Sure, you'll most likely never use it at the position you apply for, but that's the rub.
I worked with a bad brilliant developer who just couldn't produce production code to save his life. We all saw where he was going with his code but he couldn't get there. We'd all end up cleaning up his code to get it into a better place. He would've aced interviews like at Google.
In the end you need people who can deliver.
It would be like requiring you to recite all the marks you received on all your assignments in all your classes in your last semester of your senior year of college. I assume that if you had just graduated, this would be easy, but if you had graduated 10 years prior, this would be hard (feasible if you'd kept the paperwork--but hard).
Why those employees would be put in a position to interview with such a short time frame of professional experience, let alone recruiting experience, is beyond me.