Wasn't there a study by Google a while back, where they found, as a trend, that their most successful people had only marginally passed their job interview ?
The finding was that people who had received a "no hire" recommendation yet still received an offer tended to do well. The reason being: to compensate for the poor feedback, someone else on the hiring loop believed in the candidate so much and saw something exceptional and were willing to go to bat for them.
That sounds like the Pareto-optimal solution to a job interview. It's like how you're not doing grad school properly if your grades are better than C.
Also, candidates who do too well could be too good for the job, since Google supposedly likes having incredibly overqualified people maintain do-nothing internal apps.
