I did a little research to see what the rule of thumb was on bypassing HR in terms of finding jobs and found it rather interesting.
Camp One - The "Golem HR Nazi Camp"
"NO!!! YOU NEEDS US!!! MY PRECIOUS!!!! THE POWER WE NEED!!! WE ARE IMPORTANT WE TELL US SO!!!! YOU NEEEEEEEEDS US!!!!!!"
"If you bypass us we'll kick your ass (even though we admit we're pretty useless)"
Camp Two - The Real world
All the hiring is done through networking and bypassing HR.
"Avoid HR like the plague"
"I receive more unqualified applicants from HR than qualified"
"HR can only tell you no."
"I'm from HR and even I'M telling you to avoid HR."
Ah, HR. Crushing deficits, high corporate taxes, frivolous lawsuits and over-burdensome regulation cannot hold a candle to your ability to keep the US economy from growing and booming.
"HR organizations in some industries - particularly traditional white collar enclaves like banking and insurance - wield enormous power and should not be trifled with."
ReplyDeleteyikes, whats the best way to get on HR's good side? ;)
HR scares me. They tell you one thing and tell your staff another.
ReplyDeleteAS
http://starkravingmanager.com
Those firms with prominent HR departments are candidates for failure.
ReplyDeleteWorking as I do in a university, I am accustomed to colleagues - professionals all - making hiring and tenure decisions for faculty positions. The notion of an HR thingie doing this is preposterous.
Actually, the system which prevailed when I joined was that the president effectively controlled all faculty appointments. He was an autocrat of genius, and he made some inspired choices (such as hiring me). He also made some good big blunders. Our present system avoids most but not all of the blunders but it is not informed with much genius.
Our HR dept probably looks after the hiring of secretaries, and probably do an adequate job. As for technically qualified staff - disaster area. We spend so much time arguing that our talented IT staff do deserve raises that it isn't funny. Anyway, we survived the snafu when HR reclassified *all* of the IT people to positions of lower pay. One department lost *all* of its (very good) IT people who walked on the same day. Apparently when the HR director realised that he had fooled up, he started rehiring. The story goes that one applicant, who came from industry, made a quite modest salary request - actually a lower salary than he was getting - but it was higher than that of the HR director!
In my company HRs role is primarily to keep the company from getting sued.
ReplyDeleteI dub them "Credentialistas"
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - that's the primary role of HR in *every* company, now.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't start out that way; "HR" was originally "Recruiting" plus, perhaps, "Salary and Benefits Administration". Clerical work.
All the laws allowing employees to sue employers for the most ridiculous things (like non-management employees choosing not to invite a particular employee to a private, non-work function like someone's bloody birthday party) have required corporations to be vigilant not against their competitors, but their own employees. HR is the front line of defense in that war.
The fact that so many companies are wasting so much time and energy on this crap is a major wealth and production drain for the West. Get rid of any and all "workplace harassment" laws and a good chunk of the pointless business process regulatory maze and you'd see HR vanish overnight.
The only legitimate function of HR is benefits management.
ReplyDeleteNever met a person from HR that wasn't a smug, condescending asshole!!
ReplyDeleteI am having a blog discussion on one of the HR blogs that you have linked to. What I am specifically trying to have answered to me is how an HR manager can be more capable of identifying and hiring talented engineers, for example, than the engineering manager or VP himself. This is the claim that is at the heart of having HR involved in the hiring process at all, and a quite irrational one at that.
ReplyDeleteIt has always been my contention that the only legitimate function of HR is benefits administration. It has been a more general contention that the business enterprise should always have as senior manager those who are involved and experienced in the core function of the enterprise. Functions such as accounting, HR, and the like are strictly support functions that exist to serve and advice the decision-makers of the enterprise, who should ALWAYS be the core function people.
This is such common sense that it seems a tautology to even make these points.
That much of the American business culture has deviated from such common sense explains considerably why American business culture is so utterly dysfunctional at the current time (and why we will have a long, long recession before things will get better).