Couldn't agree more. The first interview is usually with a non-technical person (like HR), so at the first round candidates are often rejected for things that have no real bearing on job performance.
I've had multiple calls where the interviewer obviously didn't look at my resume beforehand and rejected me for not having enough years of work history or previous experience of a specific technology. Both are fair reasons but it's insulting and representative of how little they respect engineers' time.
We do the same, first non-technical interview, and we reject most candidates due to the cultural fit issues. It’s too expensive to involve dev resources into the process first. In our process: if you are friendly, sound smart and enthusiastic, you get the tech challenge as the next step.
