Irritating Habits of HR People

[was]

1. Why don't potential employers read resumes?

-Because the flunkies assigned to weeding out resumes for further consideration are not the ones trusted to do the interviews. Thus, the process often rests in the hands of those who are used to coordinating work, not the ones who actually do the work.

2. Why in the eitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks do they ask why I am the superior choice over the other candidates?

-Because they adhere to the used car salesman approach to hiring. They excuse it by saying that they want you to sell yourself. The question is really a formality. By then, they've already made up their mind whether or not you'll continue on to the next step in the process.

And 3. Why all the shopping around?

-They really aren't shopping around that much. They just want any excuse to disqualify you as an applicant. HR is a rules game. The rules say that you have to post the job opening and accept external applications. The truth is, in most cases, that they already have an applicant in mind for the position before you even submit your resume. Internal hires, or those candidates with internal references, will get the position 95% of the time. It doesn't matter if you're more qualified or not. The thought of getting a job based on your own merits is a nice idea, but I have discovered that the bitter truth to success is in who you know.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Given the scenarios you described the VP would have been given preferential treatment in just about every case.

That's often true, but I've known people to give preferential treatment to the executive assistant. Depending on who that person works for, how big the company is and how much contact you have with them, having the executive assistant happy with you can potentially be a lot more useful than the VP, though you must still keep that person very happy.

 

[MaxKaladin]

The trouble is that an interview is not going to tell you anything useful about a person's social skills except how good they are at interviews. That's not just my opinion; there's a mountain of evidence that interviewing is not an effective method of selecting employees and even produces sub-optimal outcomes for the employer. Given that interviewing is no more useful than tossing a coin and possibly less so, you might as well opt for the candidate that's the best qualified.

Exactly. Interviewing is a special skill set that some people are masters of. It doesn't reflect how good their social skills are past a basic level, but only how good they are at navigating the minefield of interviewing. People can have good social skills but not be good at interviewing. For instance, I always get along well with my coworkers but I have a hard time getting past interviews. I just can't manage the schmoozing.

Of course, I also suspect my job history is a problem. I've been a contractor for a long time and I believe that a lot of employers think I'm going to be a job hopper despite my trying to explain that I'm sick of contracting and I want to start a career with one company and stay there.

 

[WayneLigon]

And 3. Why all the shopping around?

I don't understand why these people feel the need to play shopping games. If they would hire the first person they get who is qualified, answered their questions more or less right, and passed the screening stuff (drug test, criminal background check, etc.) they would fill the position quicker, and just as reliably if not more so. Instead, the person they ultimately hire is the person who is best at playing the HR game, rather than necessarily best at the actual position, and the process just drags on and on.

I would guess it would depend on the mix of other people they'd be working with and how they might get along, especially if you're hiring for a position that regularly works in a team. The first person who has the best technical qualifications might not be the best person for the job. I can think of a couple people who are qualified as hell as far as technical aspects go but they're virtually unhirable because they can't get along with people in a team situation for longer than six months, or in one where they might have to serve two or more masters. They're working in positions far below what they are technically capable of because of this; the companies can get some use out of their skills and don't have to subject others to their presence. They'll stay where they are until they die, though.

If those companies had not shopped, they'd be stuck with these guys in more prominant positions. Firing them due to certain considerations would not be easy. They more than likely would have adversely affected the team productivity and led to lower morale for the rest of the people that had to depend on them.

Also, you shop because you might get a bargain You get Professional A who has a wife and kids and a home. You get Professional B who is a single guy. Both are equally competent in their job. In some cases, you might want B because he's going to work cheaper than A. In some cases you might want A despite his higher price tag because he'll mesh better with the more seasoned and mature people on the team position you're trying to fill, where B might be too much of an outsider.

Another consideration, sad to say, might be the race or sex of the person. If company policy says that a woman needs to be in that position now because otherwise you might start getting complaints from other departments or a closer look from Federal officials, you hire the most competant woman you can get. She may or may not be the most technically qualified of the applicants, but in addition to the 'HR game', HR sometimes has to play the 'let's not open ourselves to a lawsuit' game.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I don't understand why these people feel the need to play shopping games. If they would hire the first person they get who is qualified, answered their questions more or less right, and passed the screening stuff (drug test, criminal background check, etc.) they would fill the position quicker, and just as reliably if not more so. Instead, the person they ultimately hire is the person who is best at playing the HR game, rather than necessarily best at the actual position, and the process just drags on and on.

Another reason I don't like the shopping around is it really drags out the hiring process. The past two companies I have worked for had HR departments that routinely took 8 weeks or more to fill an unskilled entry level position. As a front-line manager who constantly had to deal with staffing shortages, I found this very irritating.

 

[wingsandsword]

Another reason I don't like the shopping around is it really drags out the hiring process. The past two companies I have worked for had HR departments that routinely took 8 weeks or more to fill an unskilled entry level position. As a front-line manager who constantly had to deal with staffing shortages, I found this very irritating.

Not to mention the people who typically need unskilled entry level positions can't afford to go long without work.

In trying to just get entry-level jobs, I find it utterly amazing the amount of background checks some places want to do, for simple retail/drone work. A complete work history of every job you've ever held, ever, with up-to-date contact info for whoever was your supervisor at the time of your employement, every residence you've ever lived at since the age of 18, half a dozen references, detailed personality-test questionaaires, just to be a retail clerk or resturaunt server.

It seems overkill to have to take a 30 minute personality test/psychological questionaaire, spend hours tracking down places you worked a decade or more ago during the summer to see if they're still in business and get a current address for someone who may be a long-separated employee, then have to recall the street address of every place you've lived in your life, all so I can stand behind a register or take your sandwich order.

Then again, sometimes you get a very bad feeling about a place when you're going to apply at a place based on their HR/Office environment. One time I was applying for a retail clerk position at big chain department store, and the place looked dead when I stepped in the office. It was already a bad sign when employees at the store couldn't direct me to the office, but when I finally found it, the entire place had the yellowish stain of frequently smoked tobacco, with the stink lingering in the air, old dot-matrix continuous-form banners lined the wall that were frayed and obviously quite old. The calendar was from several years ago, and the computers were literally a decade old. When I explain to the little old lady behind the desk that I'm here to apply for the job they advertised, she directs me to a computer in the corner for applications.

I'm now quite certain that the trend to use computers for job applications is just a fancy way for HR to completely ignore/dispose of unwanted applications with no fuss, you fill out your application, and it's quietly discarded while you sit around hoping for a call. In any case, I sit down at a decade-old Packard Bell computer running the original version of Netscape Navigator (this was in Fall 2003) for a crude set of web forms for my job application. I don't know if it's actually networked or dialling somewhere, only that it's asking for application-type information like SSN. I give it all the required info (reluctantly since security looked spotty at best, but I really needed the job), and the thing seems to take forever just to process each page. I get through personal information, then on to listing 5 contacts, then on to every place I've lived in the last 20 years (which requires a cell phone call to my parents, since I don't know where exactly I lived when I was 4), then on to every place I've ever worked, and then on to a seemingly endless series of personality/psychological questions that seem painfully transparent (like a hack-job version of the MMPI), for example (all to be answered with Strongly Agree/Agree/Indifferent/Disagree/Strongly Disagree):

"It is always wrong to steal, no matter the reason"
"It is more important to be satisfied for a job well done than to be paid well at your job"
"I take pride in my work, no matter how seemingly unimportant the task"

These questions seem to take forever, and frankly are pretty demeaning. I get through pages of them, when Windows 3.1 this Packard Bell (in Fall 2003 remember) has a Blue Screen of Death and goes down, and the computer fails to reboot, giving an error message during the POST. The little old lady says things like this happen all the time (looking over, she's also using an identical computer also with Win 3.1), and she has to call a technician from the corporate office, who should be in next week, and I can come back late next week to reapply. I smile and walk away, never to return, as I realize not only am I unlikely to get hired, the place is a nightmare if I actually worked there.

 

[ssampier]

Not to mention the people who typically need unskilled entry level positions can't afford to go long without work.

In trying to just get entry-level jobs, I find it utterly amazing the amount of background checks some places want to do, for simple retail/drone work. A complete work history of every job you've ever held, ever, with up-to-date contact info for whoever was your supervisor at the time of your employement, every residence you've ever lived at since the age of 18, half a dozen references, detailed personality-test questionaaires, just to be a retail clerk or resturaunt server.

It seems overkill to have to take a 30 minute personality test/psychological questionaaire, spend hours tracking down places you worked a decade or more ago during the summer to see if they're still in business and get a current address for someone who may be a long-separated employee, then have to recall the street address of every place you've lived in your life, all so I can stand behind a register or take your sandwich order.

I know Walmart does this, of course, their computer is a lot nicer. Thank god I didn't have to work there. Now I make almost twice what the entry level associate wage is.