[stantaylor]

I think a lot of people buy into the fallacy that there is a single best candidate, and you must find that candidate. I choose to approach hiring assuming that there are many good enough candidates. Furthermore, hiring is the process of finding the best candidate within the given constraints on the hiring company/manager: time, effort, primarily.

[usrusr]

A lot of software dev hiring is not on demands, to fill a pressing gap, but more like an opportunistic background process. The perfect candidate will be added to the herd, but if that perfect candidate fails to show up, the opening will remain open forever. Not hiring the almost-perfect candidate is a hedge against the scenario of the perfect one entering the market while the company is not advertising an opening.