And I have to say… this is PARTICULARLY true with Calgary employers.
(currently in the Calgary Airport waving at you!)
This.
Of course. Otherwise they’d have to try to both understand the job requirements and actually read the resumes. Way too time-consuming. Ditching 50% of the resumes on basis of “didn’t like the formatting” means a colossal saving of labor on the part of HR.
If they are, it isn’t at the company my husband works for since I do all of the insurance stuff myself. I’m not sure what his HR dept is actually for since any time I ask him to check with them on something, their answer is to call this place or that place.
I know the pit is for anger, but you folks put a smile on my discouraged face this morning, along with some laughs about the absurdity of the HR department black holes.
I’ve applied for positions that require a specific independently-accredited master’s degree, and either require or strongly prefer a second master’s or a doctorate (I meet the requirement and the preference). They require specific technical expertise unique to the fairly unusual profession. I have that. They require substantial experience performing the functions of the position (as advertised - Og knows what the hiring manager is really looking for). They want a cover letter, resume/cv, official ($$$$$ - five for me) transcripts of all colleges/universities attended, their application form, and additional forms (that truly make no sense to require at the initial application stage). All materials must be submitted together (umm, “official” transcripts normally means sent by the institution, not by me), submitted electronically (again, “official” transcripts?? not to mention the size of the files), “no phone calls or faxes.” … and … nothing, no response. Not even an automated or semi-automated email acknowledgment of receipt of my application. Og forbid you email (remember, “no phone calls”) them a polite follow-up inquiry - it either is also black-holed or the response is a curt form email that somehow still doesn’t acknowledge whether your application materials were actually received.
I’ve been interviewed, and told that in their process, I would next hear from HR. I’ve then sent my thank you emails to the interviewers. I never hear from HR. Nothing. I completely understand that they selected another candidate, but seriously, how hard is it to send a “thanks but no thanks letter” to someone the organization actually interviewed? Particularly when they only interviewed about ten people? In one of these cases of post-interview nothingness, I did actually get something from HR - it was a cheery note strongly encouraging me to apply for a similar position they had open. I did, and no response whatsoever on that one. Their reputation within the profession is poor, mostly due to their hiring mis-practices and associated crap pay (requires the specific master’s degree, but pays less than waiting tables and includes a “no benefits” package).
Of course, I do open and close all my cover letters with:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Shove your fucking ridiculous application process up your ass.
…
Sincerely,
Ill-tempered Unemployable Bitch
Do you think this might be working against me?
That’s all I can figure. I realize that poor formatting can be the sign of a poor worker, but a lot of these shitty systems require you to cut and paste your resume into their little fields. God only knows how it’s spit out at the other end. I would gather it doesn’t look great but it’s really not possible to know how it looks to the person reviewing it unless you can submit PDFs – which is my preference, but a lot of companies won’t take them.
On a related note, I just remembered a phone interview I had with a local tech company. Based on the job description I absolutely was a perfect fit for the job. When the HR drone called me – she sounded about 19 and definitely in no way a technical person – she didn’t want to use any of the experience on my then-current job for the interview. She insisted that we only talk about previous jobs… all of which were less relevant. She particularly wanted to know about jobs I worked before the 4 most recent listed in my resume. And I was in my late 20s, and had spent 4 years on the job with the company I wasn’t to talk about. Going back to before my resume meant going back to high school McJobs! The job posting requested 2-4 years of relevant experience…
I tried to figure out what was going on and be very cordial, but it was an on-the-rails conversation and she got really angry when I tried to ask. Based on the context I’m pretty sure she was either really ill-prepared for the interview and not a good ad-libber, or she had the wrong resume and realized her error halfway through. In any case, I didn’t get a real interview. Not sure what happened there but it definitely didn’t endear me to the company. I wouldn’t apply there again.
I currently work in HR and before this job, I had one in HR.
Although instrumental in the hiring/recruiting/on boarding process, HR (again, in my experience) is not actually responsible for selecting which applicant gets the job.
The person directly responsible is the hiring manager. HR can ‘weed out’ candidates or give interviews and make determinations towards which applicants go forward to other interviews with the hiring manager.
If you were qualified for the position then the HR Rep probably gave your application/resume to the hiring manager. If you didn’t get a call back then most likely the position was internally filled (and the job wasn’t ‘real’ to begin with - a practice that is common place among government jobs, or so say the speculation of my coworkers) or the hiring manager was not satisfied with your resume.
At my last company, the HR woman’s email sig was this cheery line that read “My door is always open!” Yet it was always actually closed with the blinds drawn tightly shut. Sometimes the light would even be off so it looked like she was out. She was a worthless fucktard.
This is one of those little things which is true, but utterly trivial to the point of being deceptive. HR may not be making the real final decision, but they can more or less stop anyone’s resume at any time. Moreover, I have seen precisely one HR department in my whole life which spent any time actually looking at the applicants. For the most part, HR randomly throws out resumes without really looking at them.
The popular method is to simply look for keywords in resumes, and chuck the rest. Since HR rarely has the slightest clue what the position is about, they have some keywords written up by a manager who knows jack about hiring, mindlessly used by an apathetic HR flunky. And since most of the good people try something more subtle than parroting back the job posting…
You’ve got to be shitting me. Are you serious?
Just to provide a dose of reality here. I have been tasked to hire a new all purpose office admin type person for our office. It’s not really my “job”. But we are a small start-up and being a start up, we don’t have things like HR, recruiting, legal, analysts for my team or pens and paper until we purchase them. So for now, I’m hiring the admin while doing my actual job of running my client engagement short-staffed.
From a single Monster.com ad, I have received over 100 responses over a period of 24 hours. I can tell you right now, I am not going to look at all of them. I will go through that list roughly in order and within a minute for each, will either flag for an interview or move to the delete bin.
I work with HR (not in - with). I help them set up their HR, Benefits, and yes Recruiting systems.
In my many years I have found that the Recruiting people are the least imaginative, and most “simple” bunch. They are “people” people - as they like to remind you. Consequently, they will find any ole’ (extremely subjective) reason to reject someone for a job. 'Cause they just have soooo many resumes to weed through every day, poor things.
No - as I recall, that’s pretty much how Red got his parole in The Shawshank Redemption.
Having had to deal with numerous HR wizards for the past year as I hunted for work, I completely sympathize with the OP and other posters as they vent regarding their experiences with HR. I’ve never had an experience with any HR that I would qualify as good or excellent. Even the cats that hired me last month for a great job I would rate as only OK in their procedure and treatment of applicants.
Personally I feel HR should be two completely different professions and departments. One for the bureaucratic nature of employment (insurance, salary, holiday, complaints, reviews etc.) and another for actual recruitment practices.
The practice that irks me the most is the advertisement of ‘fake’ jobs that many HR departments lay out to get a feel for what is in the market. Some of these competitions even run up into the second interview phase. But it is all b.s since there was never a position to begin with.
I don’t believe I have ever met anyone who wanted to be an HR professional. The ones I know just sort of fell into to it because they didn’t have anything better to do.
Oh, YOU’RE the Vinyl Turnip that Pynchon meant to respond to. So sorry, he accidentally included your letter in with one he sent to me.
I can read it to you… wait…ah, here tis.
My dear Vinyl Turnip, if that is your real name,
I acknowledge your attempt to share some sub-grandiose knock-knock jokes with me, but you must by now be aware that I included the Most Grandiosest One Ever in The Crying of Lot 49.
The joke, attempted in the novel by the Right Reverend Wildergaard Beamalsby in the company of his solicitor in antediluvian Patagonia, goes something like:
*Knock-knock…
Oh, halloo!
**Knock-knock…
**What DO you pretend to be up to?
**No, “knock-knock”…
**What the bloody deuce?!?
**No, you say “Who’s there?”
**Must I?
**I’m afraid so.
**All right. Who’s there?
A barrister from the law firm Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek & McMingus! Naming Miss Oedipa Maas the executor of her former lover’s estate!
I am leaving. I have some HR letters to write.
But, wait…
Well, I have put them off for a season already. I may not write them at all. *
Is that not a slice of life-as-it-should-be? I’m so sorry none of your witticisms come close.
Sincerely,
Tom
This reminds me of a phone call a few years back Luckily, I can actually get through to humans at HR departments on occasion:
Me: Hello, I’m looking for some feedback for one of my students who recently applied for a job with you. His name was XXX
HR Drone: Oh, yes, he was not qualified for the position.
Me: He certainly seemed to have everything you were looking for.
HRD: He did not have squills.
Me: Excuse me?
HRD: We’re looking for someone with squills.
Me: Skills?
HRD: No, squills.
Me: (light dawning) Do you mean SQL?
HRD: That’s right, squills.
Me: The student in question has a lot of knowledge about Structured Query Language. He’s taken two courses in it, and has worked with it in his last job. It says so on his resume.
HRD: It didn’t say squills.
Me: (barely suppressed rage) No, it said Structured Query Language. That is SQL. Or “squills” to you. Will you let the hiring manager know that he is a qualified candidate now?
HRD: No. I’d have to tell him I made a mistake.
Me: (AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!)
New term: “No, I didn’t get the job. I got squilled by their HR.”
EP and Jack, thanks for making my day.
I’m very happy to learn this.
Is there a thread where you spill the details (of how you found the job, what kind of work it is, things like that)?
If HR people had any sort of imagination or intelligence, they would be in any other job.
Before heading to college, i worked a few years in hotels and catering, in a few different countries. Only a few of the places i worked were large enough to have HR departments, but in each case those departments were filled with some of the most vapid-yet-self-important people i’ve ever encountered. These were folks with double-digit IQs who managed to simultaneously demonstrate total incomprehension and complete condescension.
Since then, my main experience with HR types has been in the universities and colleges where i have been a student and then a teacher. At my undergrad university in Australia, the folks majoring in Human Resource Management were, for the most part, the ones who found Marketing too intellectually challenging. The idea that people like this actually serve as gatekeepers for job applications in highly technical and specialized fields, or even in fields simply requiring a modicum of intellectual capacity, is staggering. It would be liking asking me (a humanities person) to decide who should be the new project leader for the Large Hadron Collider.