Ask HN: Hiring ideas

So interviews are painful and not 100% indicative of talent. Long probation periods are unfair to the employee. Public code profiles etc. can be faked.

Can you think of any other ideas that will work?

Let me throw out one to start the discussion: Hiring based on recommendation from current employees. The current employee recommending gets a stake in the new employee and loses that if the new employee doesn't work out. Recommendations to be tracked as a part of perf review as well (So that you can't just spam a ton and get money). This can be made into a considerable sum based on the new employee level. This also means you can't recommend way up (junior engineers recommending VPs for example) because you might not have had a chance to evaluate them right. Obviously this is off the top of my head - so will need tuning.

NOTE: This is not for my company btw, just curious.