In a large organisation's personnel department, I can picture the process of sifting 3000 application forms down to 20 interviewees being delegated to one or a number of non-management-grade personnel.
Unless there is someone watching over their shoulder, they can throw applications in the discard pile using any criteria they want, if the boss is sufficiently "hands off".
Interview stage would be conducted by at least a junior manager or section head. In order to be seen to be doing the right thing, they need to select the minority candidates often enough to keep the organisation's ethnic mix in proportion to (this never happens) the *application pool's ethnic mix*. Naturally, that statistic is lost at the binning of CV's stage, so they go for the national average mix - which is unfair on minorities who are clustered in big cities.
Now, if liberal progressives have, over the years, been advancing to management level while bigots are kept in their place in the admin grades then it becomes apparent how sifting on the basis of names alone came about.