Your article makes a lot of very good points about some of the difficulties of hiring talented staff and some of the downsides of making mistakes. The strategy to hire people in as consultants and then promote those to full time salary positions once they've proven themselves and their ability to work with the team is a good one. We tend to do that whenever possible.

On the other hand, I think the headline question can be answered rather quickly: someone like Steve Jobs would never apply for an interview in the first place. :-)

That's in my mind is the best strategy. Unfortunately, I had my fair share of busts when I thought I hired great people and turned out to be no more than mediocre. Looking back, I really don't think I could have decide any differently with having only couple of hours worth of interviews as my data. Nothing beats spending real time with the person.