To play devil's advocate -
you have an opening that requires the skills of an entry level engineer. An entry level engineer in your community makes $55k per year, while a top level engineer makes $90k. You have two applicants, one is a top level engineer and one is a fresh-out-of-school entry level engineer. What do you do?
Yep. That IS the question, isn't it? Looking at the Boeing link, there are insights - they want the newbie to come in and get the older guy to train his replacement. The "code words" are contained in that job responsibilities section (line 6).
Except the skills they are talking about are NOT entry level by any stretch of the imagination. Later they specifically say 1+ years experience - that is barely enough time to start to "learn where the bathrooms are" in that particular topic. You would know how to move around through the jargon, and would be at the point where a contribution could be made over the next year and beyond, with plenty of hand-holding by old guy.
It IS a very good thing to hire new people - I have personally hired 3 interns in previous lives, followed on by one full time employment. Tried to get the other two, but they got the light in their eyes for national security work. And made recommendations, that were accepted, on 2 others in current life - one of whom sits next to me right now for the last 3 weeks. (Other one was last years intern.)
This happens due to a pretty good amount of forward thinking about supporting and working with local universities. (TU, OSU, and OU are the schools I have direct experience with, in particular Dr. S. Singh at TU.)
I realize Boeing has to try to 'staff up' as quickly as possible when they get military contracts like this, and there are spot shortages of people from time to time. Just a tiny bit of foresight would help the situation, though, and make life much easier. But then upper management wouldn't squeeze every last penny out of the bonus plan for keeping head count below a bare minimum. Or every last $100,000 out of the plan....