I don't know, the world grows more insane every day. I used to do a little hiring and firing, but would hire new people only as a last resort, only if  no one already at the company wanted the job or was qualified. I always, always preferred going with employees who were already working there. Whenever you fill a vacancy with new people, you never know what you'll get - often times until it's too late. 

But if I had to guess, I would say overall that the quality of entry level applicants is abysmal, and the idiots in HR are just as abysmal - a pretty bad combination. Just a guess mind you. But I remember how it was 25 years ago when I was part of that mess, I imagine things have gotten much worse since then. 

hare-brained HR-types than an honest and open hiring process

¾ of HR is women.
The companies doing real innovation are like Telegram: no HR department, only a few dozen employees, and they've given Big Tech companies with their thousands of employees, HR overhead, and foozeball tables quite the competition!

I agree that HR is largely a jobs program for women.

It's single women's welfare.

I just eeked out of this REAL mess when I got my first "career" job in 2015. They let me go because they hired the owners son and I got canned, I was low man on the pole. No biggie, that's life. 

I'm in Design/Engineering/CADD btw.

I struggled a bit finding my niche. Asked by boss in my second job for a raise to his face in 2020, when they quiet hired us into new jobs/roles without higher pay. He said "no", quit,  3rd job, I got laid off in a year (super small engineering firm), then used a headhunter to find work quick, got one, way better pay and the headhunters even had benefits. thennnn, I moved again, found my wife (thanks!) had the work experience, found even better pay at a place of direct hire with 12k employees internationally. Unfortunately, your super large corporate companies are you safest in job security.. You can bank on that. Your mom and pops or mid levels tend to be cliquey and/or political, not to mention if work is slow, they will need to cut you. Larger firms can most definitely weather a slow period and keep a good employee.... 

Headhunters are great because they offer a probationary period and you can see if you like it or not, or if they like you. It's a win-win. If you can handle it, being a temp here and there isn't bad. It's impossible to get burned out, too. My buddie just goes from job to job on contracts. Puts money into his own retirement thing he does (don't ask). 

From what I've been through, I can surely tell you that getting 2 year technical degree, then maybe a 4 year is the way to go. Or.. two technical 2 year degrees. If you go to college for anything other than STEM, you've lost. sorry. You have to be savvy today. Strategize, make yourself liked at work through good attitude and communication. Don't be Mr. quiet guy. It works. Especially in larger companies. 

But saying all that, you have to go through the tough times in your early days of working. It's inevitable... You don't get to coast like those super upper middle class/rich brats. (you know who I'm talking about)

As Émile Keller wrote, one of the "Duties of the capitalist towards the employees and workers placed in his service" is to "Let the sexes be separated."

And why must the ratios be balanced? What's driving/incentivizing such egalitarianism?

The media, the Government (there are laws in place in most Western countries), cultural expectations, pressure from women, pressure from feminist men, etc.

If you're asking where it originally came from, then I'm not sure. Jєωιѕн academics probably. But the above are who I suppose sustain it day-to-day.

I agree that HR is largely a jobs program for women. It's a department that's designed to suit women's strengths in interpersonal-interactions, and I'm not convinced HR staff do as good a job in candidate selection or conflict-resolution as they are designed to.

My theory is that HR and marketing departments are so large and so full of women because the other departments are usually so full of men, and dating mechanics are at-play. After college, a secular man has few if any other avenues to meet women except at work, and having attractive young women around would probably improve morale in any case. And while companies may pledge total equality - the factual differences between men and women in both physical and personality-related attributes render this utterly impossible. So instead, in order to achieve rough parity company-wide, we end up with men in the brass-tacks departments and women in the inter-personal departments. The main exception would be cleaning - which is a mostly invisible and practical (non-personal) job which women tend to dominate, but you'll also notice that most cleaning ladies are older women who are already married or not looking to marry, and that explains why it's an exception.

Most secure adults are overweight, so not attractive.