I totally agree. It won't work in big companies, but small companies staffed by small-minded (or, sometimes, simply "realistic") people make up a large chunk of the economy. Some discrimination laws even preclude companies under a certain size, because when you only have a handful of people, it can be both practical and necessary to hire to spec.

I guess a legal alternative is to headhunt rather than advertise positions. In the tech industry, I suspect this is a lot easier (thanks to open source, blogs, etc) than elsewhere. Surely there aren't laws against a company hunting down people they want to hire, rather than hanging out their shingle and waiting for people to submit résumés.