HRevolution

I have a brother in higher education. He's a professor at a state university and shared a tale of an ongoing encounter with HR. He is on the review committee conducting a national search for another professor. Their institution has open positions for which there is competition from other universities. The review committee recognizes the need to evaluate and extend offers efficiently. Given the highly technical nature of these positions, the academics need to review resumes themselves in order to determine the best candidates. In accordance with University policy, they contacted HR to run a series of ads. This is where the fun began.

The review committee wanted to ascertain whether an adequate pool had responded or if more ads were needed. So, they called HR to request the resumes be forwarded to the committee. But HR would only tell them how many applications had been submitted. The committee chair explained that quantity wasn't the issue, quality was. The committee needed to review the resumes in order to determine whether enough qualified applicants had responded. The HR response was that their policy didn't allow them to forward resumes for review. Instead, HR would review and forward 'qualified applicants' to the committee. Frustrated, the chairman replied that, lacking a PhD in mollecular genetics, HR was not qualified to make such recommendations. This was the reason a review committee had been formed. HR stood fast - they would not forward the resume pool. Since the review committee was meeting the next day, the chairman offered to stop by the HR office, go over the resumes himself, then on to the meeting. Grudgingly, HR obliged.

While this real-life saga continues, I'm stunned at how the university's core mission can be harpooned by bureaucratic morons. Supported by my tax dollars, no less. Apparently this is the norm. It hadn't occured to me that working in HR at government institution could double the uselessness, but maybe it can.

Next time we need cut the education budget, why don't we minimize the bad investments (instead of teachers) starting with the HR staff...

Borrowing from the biological sciences, I’d like to point out inbreeding is not a great way of evolving. Last week, I received a flyer from IQPC with the following excerpt from one of the presentations:

HR IQ Tip
Don't recreate the wheel; look at the competition, take their wheel and put a white wall on it.

Remember, this is a workshop where you go to learn how to do your job better. I’m all for taking shortcuts and learning from others’ mistakes, but I’m concerned that our industry lacks any original thought. I see a lot of recycled bad ideas.

Working in HR has become one grand avoidance of thinking. Take the concept of ‘best practices.’ The idea is you can accomplish more by copying someone else’s effort. This is a good idea run amok. That makes it a bad idea. The message is “Don’t think, copy someone else!” Somehow this makes you smart. This emphasis on best practices implies we’re too lazy (or too stupid) to give any thought to our situation. We’d rather copy someone else (preferably a name brand organization, if you please). It has reached the point of inbreeding. And, as biological scientists might predict, we’re getting dumber.

The ‘don’t think’ approach is a big reason HR is in such a sorry state. And any bureaucratic organization that has trouble quantifying it’s value is in a SORRY STATE. This “let’s look at what they do” has been taken to such extremes that our entire paradigm is inbred. Everyone buys into the same not-very-well-thought-out ideas (so-called “best practices”). Look guys, there’s no substitute for thinking.

Why would a company consider putting non-HR people in charge of HR? Because they might start thinking. How can you trust your human capital to people who don’t think about it?

Yes, I know this is supposed to shake everything up, but I think John Sumser is correct (www.interbiznet.com). With more job destinations out there the better-known ones will become even more valuable. Most job hunters don't need even more destinations to search. It's a huge waste of time.

Statistically speaking, job hunters get better results from networking. For them, the best thing to come from the .jobs domain would be to Google a ‘job title, zip code, and .jobs’ to find local jobs. But without a better matching engine they’d still have to sort through lots of crap – as with current job boards. A company like Google could refine the search technology.

So, more garbage to sift through while job hunting. Great. That’s just what a body needs while struggling through a transition period. The addition of the .jobs domain reinforces the one-sided design of systems, processes, and tools in the industry. They are made for the recruiter and the vendor community. They tend to assume candidates are on an even keel instead of off balance - or forget them entirely.

I was speaking with former coworker this morning. Like me, he's a veteran recruiter and somewhat disenchanted with his ATS. He's a talented, caring professional who is frustrated by the inflexibility of the tool set he's been given (read: that's been imposed on him). One constant frustration is his inability to cut to the chase. The system forces him to jump through hoops regardless of his assessment. He claims he respects the need for consistency and the integrity of EEO reports (he's a better man than I). But, he believes his experience should count for something. Apparently, with his system, it does not. He seems to feel he's lost stature while his boss feels they've been given a blessed gift.

I got on my soapbox about how his ATS - and ATS's in general - are designed to create reports instead of get people hired. They try to protect the company from liabilities (EEOC, lawsuits, etc.) but they're the wrong liabilities. The bigger risk lies in staffing badly.

He said it better: HR is like the guy holding Michael Jackson's umbrella - protecting him from the sun and rain while the courts are crucifying him.