I never claimed to understand the HR profession, largely because I don't believe it to be a real profession. Sure doing benefits and compensation is a real profession. And studying and researching the labor market like outfits like Mercer is absolutely a profession. But the 24 year old HR generalist ditz that asks me questions like;
"What is your favorite color and why"
who at the same time is presumably the first line of defense to help in (what would seem to be the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TASK OF) finding the best labor,
ehhhh, not so much a profession. More like "accounting was hard and I like having power... err...I meant, I'm a people person" kind of hobby.
But there is one thing I do not get and that is Taleo/Brass Ring or any one of those online application software packages. Not that having an online application program is a bad thing, but the only question I want answered is;
WHY IN EF'S NAME DO I HAVE TO UPLOAD A RESUME ONLY TO RE-ENTER THAT SAME DAMN DATA INTO TEXT FIELDS???
Uploading the resume I can understand.
Entering my work experience in individual, organized text fields.
BUT NOT BOTH!
But oh no, they want you to duplicate your work.
Thus, I ask all of you Cappy Cap readers, does anybody have the answer to this?
And no, I will not be taking answers from HR people. I want an engineer or a hiring manager or something outside the political machine to give me the real answer.
POST SCRIPT - I have received enough e-mails/posts from HR professionals (which I recall quite clearly not asking for) lecturing me about the merits of this double entry data system. They fall into two categories.
One- as cited by those in the computer science fields which makes much sense - is in regards to parsing. That if one is to effectively screen for the skills/experience/talent/etc. you need to enter it twice, providing searchable data yet providing a ready-resume for reference. And that was the answer I was looking for. The logical, rational explanation why I was seemingly doing pointless work twice. I will now go forth and enter the data twice, should I ever decide to grace the labor market with the opportunity to avail themselves of my talent.
But
Two - the condescending tone of (obviously) HR professionals (who were self-admitted) about how "If you can't enter data twice, then what kind of worthless employee would you be?"
Gee, I don't know, the same kind of worthless employer/manager/management type that makes people jump through worthless hoops to prove their aptitude for being a corporate bitch...err...I mean...ummm..."prove their aptitude for being a "LOYAL" employee?"
ENTER DATA TWICE SIMPLY TO PROVE POTENTIAL LOYALTY?
No, sounds more like a screening tactic to find out who you can get to be your corporate bitch (sorry for my cursing, but I am adamantly insistent this is one of the major flaws of corporate America that will bring about it's end) than any sincere desire to find talented ADULT employees.
This is precisely the response I wanted because it does prove that these HR people are:
TALENTLESS
WORTHLESS
INCOMPETENT
SELF-PRESERVING
MORONS
who have no real skill or talent, but above all else are;
POWER HUNGRY ASSHOLES WHO DON'T CONTRIBUTE A DAMN THING TO THE CORPORATION.
What sick twisted minds come up with a WORTHLESS test to simply test whether people will pointlessly do things? What it tells me is what we've already known.
Corporate America wants compliant people. Not smart people. Smart decisions are reserved for nepotists, connected cronies, and people who sleep their way to the top. And if you want to become part of "Lehman Brothers" or "Goldman Sachs" well your schmoozing tactics must be top notch.
And if you don't believe that I'm right, that I'm just some embittered kook, well then, why don't you just take a looksie at the profits of all those "established" "fortune 500" corporations and "bulge bracket" "elite" Wall Street firms?
Wouldn't the "BEST TALENT" have inoculated them against this housing crash and subsequent economic crisis?
Oh, that's right, I don't play corrupt ball. And people like Shiller and Schiff are morons.
In the meantime, enjoy hiring the MBA's who've been trained to tell you what you want to hear and not what you need to hear. Let alone anybody with any real skill, talent or insight that might actually lead your company out of this economic morass and into prosperity. I'm sure you'll become as innovative and efficient as Japanese Kieretsu's.
Effing morons.
25 comments:
Yes, you've hit upon a peeve of mine. HR departments often devise arbitrary filters to cull out candidates. Google, for example, excludes people who are not from top ranked schools or who don't have near perfect GPAs regardless of the circumstances. They get 1800 applications a day so they have to find some way to whittle it down.
I applied for a job as Director of Leader Development. For four years I had been working as the Director of Leader Development. I never even got to the first of their eight interviews and the position remained open for more than eight months.
I also hate customer service systems which ask for your phone/ account number and the first thing the live human does is ask for the same number and you can hear them typing it in. The computer prompt and menus are an intentional time waster.
When using sites that post job openings and allow the person to apply - the site often has their own template to answer these resume type questions, but they usually don't capture everything that an applicant would normally provide, so we always have them include the resume.
However, when I do get both, you sometimes catch the person in a resume lie. They attach their official resume, but in their off the cuff filling out the other fields, you can learn some interesting/contradictory things. Basically it is a front line "are you stupid?" test.
When I'm CEO I'm eliminating those awful programs. Sorry, but the actually talented folks aren't going to waste HOURS to apply to one job. Those programs act like reverse filters in that they filter out the good people and only the scrubs with invaluable time will sit and plod through them all.
Also, Dear Captain, why are you applying for a job when you've previously stated it wasn't worthwhile to earn additional income as it would all be taxed away?
Short answer: They have authoritah, and you must respect it by jumping through their hoops.
It's not really surprising that HR people don't know squat about hiring. In today's business environment, the purpose of the HR department is only peripherally involved in finding qualified applicants. The main purpose of HR departments today is to reduce the liability exposure of the company. Hiring-discrimination lawsuits are easy to bring and expensive to defend against. You need an expert to keep up with all the paperwork so you can credibly claim that, no, we didn't turn down that guy because he was white/yellow/brown/black/gay/straight/left-handed/right-handed/male/female; we have all these procedures in place to prevent that!
The real reason is that parsing text - like a resume - for meaningful content is computationally hard. You're filling out the form fields so that they have your information in an easy to index, easy to search form in a database. This way they can easily say "Show me all the candidates with skills in Ecomonic Collapse Prediction", for instance.
They want the resume in its original form because that's what gets sent to the actual manager who's doing the hiring. Database fields or no, the way you put together a resume shows a lot about how you present yourself on paper.
So it's really about the fact that the same set of information is going to two different places with two very different needs, and computer scientists haven't figured out how to translate one into the other effectively yet.
As a software developer, my experience has been that the places that require the duplication of effort are places that are looking for people who like to waste their time, be inefficient and above all, put up with crap. They are afraid of change, and intimidated by those who are actually good at what they do and do everything they can to discourage behaviour that would make things more efficient. Otherwise, certain people may be exposed as adding little value, and then their precious little jobs might be on the line. Safer to hire those who would not make you look bad. But I'm not bitter.
"The real reason is that parsing text - like a resume - for meaningful content is computationally hard. "
Something like the above. Half the time I use a resume parser, I have to go in and correct half the data. Still, it's less time than typing everything in, but apparently a result of people formatting resumes differently. The way I get around this is having a .txt format of my resume with no frills or anything else, which seems to do better with parsers. But like you, I'm not giving you the same information twice, if you don't even attempt to fill out the data I uploaded, I typically move on to the next application website.
"I also hate customer service systems which ask for your phone/ account number and the first thing the live human does is ask for the same number and you can hear them typing it in. The computer prompt and menus are an intentional time waster."
I hate those too. However, they're not necessarily an intentional waste of time. Often there are multiple systems gathering data about your call, and they don't always talk to each other.
Not that this is the fault of the company, either. Often they've licensed these programs out from other companies, and writing the software to get them to communicate with each other just isn't something that most companies can do. So, you get redundant questions. It sucks, but that's why.
I have no explanation, but I work in the medical field and every single job I have applied for (private and public sector included) had me do exactly this. Nothing is more frustrating than typing the same information again and again. I even had a recruiter call me the next day and go through a painful 15 minute phone call where she asked me for information that I had typed in multiple times on their website! I offered to fax/email her my resume but she refused and explained that these were "followup questions" and assured me they HAD my resume. During the interview they asked me more questions that were answered on my resume, some of them were the same questions the HR lady asked. People hate HR for a reason, and I am sure this is one of many.
I understand the electronic version is for parsing data and the polished resume is for presentation, but that's bogus.
On USAJobs, you fill out the electronic form and then it automatically creates a formatted resume for management's consumption.
Since all resumes are formatted the same way, the hiring manager can compare experience, education and skills directly between candidates because it's located in the same place and order on each resume and everything is on the same scale.
It also filters out all the parchment paper, personal brands, and other formatting differences which are nothing but style over substance.
Just my inflation-adjusted two cents.
Daniel Ream is correct. Parsing free form text is very difficult from a programmatic standpoint. There are alternatives, such as allowing candidates to upload a resume and using keyword indexing, similar to Google, to find appropriate candidates from the large number of resumes.
For example, if I am an HR Manager looking for an Economist that has passed "Economics 401", I could search for the exact phrase "Economics 401" on a resume. If your resume states something like: "Economics 101/201/301/401", the search will not find your resume in the pile. Hence, they force you to enter each one individually. A royal pain...
An indexing option, (like Google) allows them to search on "Economics and 401" which would return your resume in the search results, but would also return someone that had the phrase "I don't know a damn thing about Economics, but I have 401 boils."
This forces the HR Manager to actually READ the search results and determine which results are relevant.
To summarize, if you are an applicant, they would rather waste your time than the time of the HR Manager.
I knew someone who used to be responsible for chosing articling students at a law firm. This was in the days before the Internet so resumes had to be sorted by hand.
The initial "narrowing down" criteria was pretty simple. Any spelling or gramatical mistakes in your cover letter resulted in the immediate tossing of the resume package. Next, any average below a B was chucked unless there was an obvious case of "one bad course". These were put into a "maybe" pile.
This process probably cut the initial pile, a stack easily 3 feet high, in half. At this point every resume was carefully read and examined. This was repeated as necessary to get down to 20-25 candidates for interviews (there were 4 positions).
The point of this long winded story is that all the resumes were actually looked at and read.
These search engines seem to be a crutch for lazyness. Why bother reading a resume when the search engine can do it for you? It seems that there is now an extra step required by the candidate - gaming the search engine.
I bet that the most sought after employee in any field can be screened out by HR's search engine if they fill out the fields not completely correctly. This is why "networking" still works. Hiring managers are aware of HR stupidity and try to bypass it when they can.
That's how I've managed to get every job I've ever had - by speaking directly with the hiring manager or by getting my resume directly to him. It works much better when a manager goes to HR and says "we need to hire this guy" rather than hoping that HR will fish your resume out of the black hole.
A few years ago I was looking for a job in the tax department of a large corporation. I happened to know somebody who worked in the accounting department and she knew of an opening and put me in touch with the tax director.
Long story short, I interviewed and was offered the job. However, the tax director said that before I could be "officially" offered the position, I had to complete the online application. WTF? I declined the position because I assumed this wasn't the only BS the company would put me thru.
Kinda makes working for one's self look like a smart choice. I can even ignore the results of the mandatory urine test.
Yes -- the individual fields are to enable searching, the full resume is not used until a search selects you and also for the over the phone and face to face interview process.
What is more interesting is other ways that companies screen out the massive numbers of resumes received.
For example, one major (failing) retailer tosses every resume for a position not received between 9AM and 10AM on Thursdays. Yes, really. Because they get such a flood, they can afford to do that. Of course that filters out all the best candidates who applied the other 167 hours during the week. I did say they are a failing retailer.
In the IT field, you have to play "buzz word bingo" to get your resume through the screen. Because of course, it is easier to set the search conditions to look for strings such as Java, XML, RDBMS, SQL, WebSphere etc. Regardless of the fact that you might be interviewing for a senior level position where you don't actually use any of these.
Unfortunately, it seems like this software is being used increasingly by more and more companies! Especially in health care!
I really love reading a company's "blurb" about valuing their employees, and then seeing that they've outsourced their online application procedure to some other company.
Not too impressed by HR anymore either, considering the amount of office/admin/payroll processing being outsourced. What is left for these people to do? Whatever they can to make themselves seem usefull, I guess.
I agree...HR doesn't want any accountability, and, as "professionals", they aren't able to screen resumes, or figure out who is competent or even a good choice to interview. Hence the stupid software, hence the stupid questions, like, "If you were a breakfast cereal, which one would you be?" That one left me really shocked. How someone could ask me, a professional a question like that? Was this kindergarten?
I hate Taleo, Brass Ring and the rest of them.
This is all a scam, so HR can get more power away from managers, so they can justify their jobs more. But in reality, companies can outsource their benefits and payroll to private companies, who do a bang up job, and get rid of these pompous morons who really have NO CLUE as to who is competent.
Taleo/Brass Ring I believe is a way for large corporations to "look like" they are looking for talent but "we cant find qualified people". Then they demand from the government "WE NEED MORE H1B VISAS!.....NOW!
The largest computer company in the US starts which starts with an I and ends in an M as well as the largest database company and many other huge companies use this piece of CRAP HR software.
You spend 45 minutes filling out all the information and the system blows you away.
Once or twice I did get a userid password and the software forgets it when you log in again.
Also you would think that once you get a Taelo/Brassring userid and password, it would work with other corporations (they don't have a central DB for this stuff?).
Taleo/Brass Ring I believe is a way for large corporations to "look like" they are looking for talent but "we cant find qualified people". Then they demand from the government "WE NEED MORE H1B VISAS!.....NOW!
The largest computer company in the US starts which starts with an I and ends in an M as well as the largest database company and many other huge companies use this piece of CRAP HR software.
You spend 45 minutes filling out all the information and the system blows you away.
Once or twice I did get a userid password and the software forgets it when you log in again.
Also you would think that once you get a Taelo/Brassring userid and password, it would work with other corporations (they don't have a central DB for this stuff?).
I too work in healthcare (NP). And my feeling is that many healthcare related positions are being managed/monopolized by Brassring. CVSCaremark has bought into brassring hook, line, and sinker. It is an absolute nightmare in terms of navigating all the crap this system puts you through, from the initial application to the on-boarding process. Indeed, I feel I should have been paid to do all this. My other complaint is the total lack of transparency regarding the use of your personal data and how it used, managed, protected (or not), and who gets to see it. I have 'agreed' to, waived, and e-signed away every and all possible recourse if my personal data is ever breached or mis-managed/used. Nowhere is there any mention of how my rights are protected. When I raised my growing concerns with CVSCaremark regarding all of these 'waivers' that I was required to sign, I was stonewalled (sp?). I was told: "no one ever asked these questions before", and that was it. Really?!?! Are you kidding me?!?! That's your answer?!?! I ultimately did not complete the on-boarding process because I felt so marginalized and disrespected.
I don't even give them the dignity of calling them "Human Resources."
"Personnel" is perfectly adequate. These types are grandiose enough as it is. Flowery titles are unnecessary. A knock upside the cranium would be better.
@Anonymous saying they will not give them dignity of calling them HR. Well, the Human resources is actually a terrible term when you start thinking of it. If you ask why? Well, it is so de-humanizing reflecting the exact state of the contemporary labour market that reduces a worker to being a resource, not more worthy than an ordinary material resource, including being completely disposable. Actually, in that context personnel department sounds more human to me. I have to agree with Sparky's comment as this has also been my experience, unfortunately, with HR:"..., my experience has been that the places that require the duplication of effort are places that are looking for people who like to waste their time, be inefficient and above all, put up with crap. They are afraid of change, and intimidated by those who are actually good at what they do and do everything they can to discourage behaviour that would make things more efficient. Otherwise, certain people may be exposed as adding little value, and then their precious little jobs might be on the line. Safer to hire those who would not make you look bad. But I'm not bitter." Well said. To the point!
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