I’m sorry, we’re looking for people who know “squills code”. You are clearly not qualified and I will not be forwarding your application at this time.
In the early days of programming, was code written with feather squills?
Because their resumes keep getting tossed by chucklehead HR folks?
Maybe they believe that they are a cut above an HR drone but that their skills are not on par with a Google programmer?
Maybe they wouldn’t want to relocate from their hometown but feel that they are perfectly qualified to work in a local business?
Ok, I give up, why aren’t they working at Google or some silicon Valley startup? I’m sure if they were interviewed some conclusions could be formed about why this is.
It’s inconceivable! Also, unpossible!
People dont like being rejected, even for sound reasons. It’s OK to dislike being rejected and to be sore at the people who reject you. Then you get over it and move on, after posting a sufficiently scathing post on a message board.
Six little words could prevent so much ire:
"Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted."
If you post a job advertisement with no intention of getting back to the candidates who applications you immediately discard, and you don’t bother to put this line in your advert, you are clueless or rude. Maybe both.
Time for a little bit of HR humor. Sadly, it’s not far off the mark sometimes.
I think people who think they automatically deserve a response in this day and age of mass email resumes are the ones who are clueless.
And honestly, I really just don’t care. As I said, I have over a hundred resumes to go through for one admin position. I have neither the time nor the inclination to scour the entire stack to make sure that every single candidate gets a shot nor do I wish to stroke every candidates ego to make sure they feel good about the rejection process (which basically consists of me not contacting you in any way).
Really, people need to adjust their expectations a bit.
Usually it’s because they aren’t as skilled as they think they are. Or they are jerks. I’ve interviewed dozens, if not hundreds of people and I’m constantly surprised how clueless and innept many candidates are. I mean even simple shit like show up on time, wear a suit and don’t act like a jerk.
And I think people are putting a bit too much blame on the HR folks. In my experience, usually it’s the hiring managers who review the resumes and the candidates.
Not wearing a suit? Sounds like the type of arbitrary criteria that folks are complaining about. It sounds like HR is paying more attention to intangibles than job ability. That would make sense since HR is going to be the department that has to deal with any interpersonal issues and it won’t be them dealing with job performance ones.
For the record, I can understand that a lot of people feel negative about HR departments but I don’t share it. I am grateful though that I’ve never run into the suit thing. I’ve only not gotten a job that I’ve applied for after college once ( I don’t tend to leave jobs often though ) and I’ve never once worn a suit and in fact on a bet ( about how important appearance was to getting a job ) I once dressed down and still passed the interview but I was a heck of a self salesman and I sold 'unique very well.
A few years ago I was interviewed by an HR guy who used to be a beer distributer. The second half hour of that interview consisted mainly of him telling me about some killer beers I’d never tried and where in town were the best places to buy them. I got that job and loved it until the economy hit.
HR folks can be pretty cool sometimes. 
Still, it’s fair to say that my experiences are pretty unusual and there is some issue here. Whether it’s a perception thing or if there really are some horrid HR departments out there or if people are overinflating their job worthiness I couldn’t say. Probably a bit of all of them.
You would be surprised at how many complaints HR fields from other coworkers with regard to business attire. Personally I don’t care if you show up wearing a diaper, as long as I don’t have to change it and you do your job, you are good to go as far as I’m concerned. The problem is that other people get offended and complain. If person a is wearing flip flops and person b just got sent home last week by their boss for wearing flip flops, you can bet that person b is going to complain to HR about person a.
We also get to deal with managers/employees who want something done about a ‘stinky’ coworker. Those meetings are not pleasant.
So if someone shows up to a business job where business attire is expected and they are wearing a T-shirt, it’s something that HR is going to take notice of because it could become a problem.
I don’t know - dress codes are rapidly changing and I suspect that with more and more people working from home that most jobs will not require a dress code.
TYPICALLY if you are interviewed by HR it is to see if you fit the culture and to see if you can get along with the people at work. It is not an interview of your technical ability - that’s where the manager’s interview comes in. Sometimes I’ve conducted interviews just to kill time because the hiring manager is busy - so there’s those kind of interviews as well.
When I’ve conducted interviews, I’ve typically known what the position was OR I’m doing an interview to see if the person gets along with people. When I was giving interviews we had a hostile work environment (VP and floor manager hated each other…openly) and I served as an objective viewpoint - I’d sit in on both interviews and then I’d interview the person (basically to ask them how they felt about the job, what their expectations were, etc).
The only time I really had an impact on hiring was when someone showed up clearly drunk. I let the managers know, a second HR person came in to confirm, and we sent the person home without interviewing the hiring manager.
Good for you (seriously). I think dress codes are (generally) stupid, but unfortunately other people do not.
I’m sure there are horrid HR departments. I don’t doubt that. I’ve only experienced rumors so far.
I get that believe me. I also worked at a job where they had the unpleasant meeting and it turned out that the girl they dragged in to the meeting wasn’t the stinky one. That wasn’t pleasant to anyone involved.
I agree. I only went the T-shirt route that one time. Mostly I dressed like I would on the job. I would not like working a job where you have to wear a suit. I’m uncomfortable in a suit. I would interview worse in a suit. I don’t look for such jobs even if I would otherwise like the work. I really am uncomfortable in suits.
I don’t think the dress code for interviews is going to change any time soon. I see people applying in suits and I work at a place where shorts and tshirts are allowed.
I sell get along well very well. That and competence. I’m sure that’s why suit was less important. I didn’t leave any grey areas in the interpersonal skills area nor my ability to do the job.
I don’t mind if they use it as a tiebreaker between equal candidates but as an instant disqualify, I think that’s short sighted. Then again, if the biggest factor in getting a job is if you can dress exactly like everyone else for an hour then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be a good fit for your company and I’m grateful you caught that. I guess I’m lucky that I haven’t worked at a place like this.
I think dress codes and the like are one way HR people think will get around these issues. I’m not convinced it works.
I hear you and I agree. On the flip side, I’m aware of one company where ‘t shirt attire’ was interpreted to include a see through shirt…
I have to wonder sometimes.
Well, I would agree with regard to ‘soon’. I don’t think anything is going to be different in the next 5 years…However, I have suspicions that within 10 years, you will see job interviews via webcasts and things like skype as the norm. Outside of certain jobs, there will be no dress code (because people will be working from home).
Fair enough.
I agree that it’s short-sighted unless there’s something really wrong. If someone shows up to a sales job wearing something extremely inappropriate that would be an instant disqualification. I’m fairly certain you’d agree and that you aren’t talking about this sort of thing.
I think that corporate culture and dress codes are changing. Perhaps not as fast as you might see, but I seriously think that in 10 years business casual in the office, with a few exceptions (lawyer, doctor, sales people).
I think A LOT of work from home jobs are going to open up. I’m already seeing some offices shut down so that the employees work from home.
I don’t expect to be contacted- except for after a FtF interview. But just for submitting my resume? No.
No, she’s right- when you go to a interview (except for the lowest level of jobs) you wear a suit. Even in Silicon Valley where ties are as rare as the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, you show up with a suit, tie, the whole nine yards for that interview.
In theory. In practice, (and others have explained this), they don’t know what to look for. They’ve taken up farming - with no knowledge of agriculture. It’s easy to throw away resumes because you don’t like them. Moreover, HR has the advantage of being a “Black Box” outfit at most companies. They’re responsible to no one. They don’t have to justify their practices, and nobody is monitoring them.
And the hiring manager can do what about it? Managers live in other departments. They don’t have the power to affect HR unless HR screws up very badly.
For someone who implies she knows all about HR and how things really work, you doin’t seem to have any notion whatsoever of how things do in fact work.
Same here, especially when I’ve been given a drop dead date - if you say you’re making a decision tomorrow, and all interviewees will be contacted by next Friday at the latest, I’m going to expect you to live up to your word.
This might be true where you work, but it has not been my experience. Where do you think the HR reps get the information for a job position? Do you believe they make it up out of whole cloth?
I haven’t even heard rumors of such attitudes or practices. This seems absurd on the face of it. Again, this might be the practice at your company, but it is not at the companies I have worked with. We very much are responsible to people. The SVP of HR is responsible to the CEO, among other people. There are also standard business practices that most companies conform to and standard certificates which indicate various knowledge HR professionals are expected to know.
The hiring manager can refuse to hire incompetence. You seem to have mythical view of HR departments. Typically in larger companies the recruiters are tracked on hiring metrics. If a recruiter isn’t hitting their numbers, that recruiter isn’t kept.
Do you work in HR? Have you ever?
With what you are saying it seems as though you’ve either worked for some seriously dysfunctional companies or you don’t know what you are talking about.
Meatros: You’re fighting against people’s ideas to want to believe nefarious things about Human Resources. It’s more fun for them than being objective about the issue, apparently. A number of things I’ve seen in this thread used to tar HR would get the HR manager canned in a nanosecond at any reputable firm.
It’s not “belief” it’s the kind of things that SOME HR staffers have actually bragged about doing, ie the sort of petty crap that makes them feel powerful but which does not benefit the bottom line. Obviously not all HR staffers are like that. But even so, in another thread we have a poster complaining about the sort of shit she got for a clerical position in Canada, and mostly she was right. But still, she admitted to shitcanning one applicant for using “CV” instead of “Resume”. Now, that’s a SBMB poster, someone smarter than the average bear. And, she bragged about shitcanning a resume for a petty, silly and arbitrary reaon, one which no applicant could possibly be expected to know.
Thus, now take the average HR drone, one who is 'the average" (have you worked much with anyone of average IQ? It’s scary how stupid that really is, someone who hasn’t read a book since school, etc) then muliply that one petty arbitrary reason by a hundred fold, stuff like “wrong font” “wrong paper” 'squills" and what not. Then consider that the average HR manager/Hiring manager doesn;t have time to go over the drones work, resume by resume, asking whay each was shitcanned.
Not quite accurate. She complained about many things on many resumes of which this was one. She clarified later that some of the people they were interviewing had actually made the mistakes she complained about. I don’t recall if she said this candidate was on the interview list however.
Air traffic control interview. No suit. Got the job. Funny, I never considered that work as lowest level of jobs kinda work. I wonder why I had to get FBI security clearance if the job is so menial?
I’m not suggesting people try this at home so to speak but technically it’s not always a must to getting a decent job. It can’t hurt though. I’d agree with that.