The latest fad appears to be forcing all candidates to be vetted by an external recruiter, even if they are already known to people inside the company. Apparently, this is for reasons of "fairness", but it's yet another segment of an increasingly long pipeline full of holes that drop out candidates somewhat randomly rather than based on the actual required attributes to perform the job effectively. The HR filter was already bad enough but now having a recruiter filter before the HR filter just means even more random rejections of candidates who could have filled the role successfully.