Labeling known engineers as "cool kids" is an easy way to dismiss it without addressing the very hard question: how do you condense weeks or even months of getting to know someone's skills into mere hours? If you know someone personally or have someone you trust vouch for him/her, is that not a pretty good way to focus your decision?

Those of us who don't have days or weeks to waste interviewing do what we can to build a good team. Yeah, that often means allowing good engineers to fall through the cracks, but we're all optimizing for time & effort.