Back when I was building software, most brilliant engineers came from some other field. Many were generalists. The most important ability was to learn (then do, then teach/lead) something they'd never seen before. Yes we had a sprinkling of 'brass rats' (slang for the MIT ring that had a beaver on it), but a lot of them came out of the school of architecture, not EE. One of the best engineers I worked with was a retired F35 IO.
Agreed 100% about HR; the secret to getting hired was to ignore HR, go right to the engineering folks. Unfortunately, that made it hard for PoC as we didn’t move in the same social circles - and frankly, affirmative action meant they could get a better paying position with a government contractor (got chased by Raytheon a bit myself as I was a x86 nerd and a EMP resistant version of that was going into their stuff). Child of the 60s here so weapons work was a hard no.