I had a candidate send email thank you notes, followed by paper thank you notes, followed by follow up calls to both me and my boss within a week of the interview. We hadn’t finished interviewing candidates, and while she’d been on the short list, we took her off. It was just. . . too much. We felt nagged.
I always send them. The woman I just hired actually didn’t send one, but we didn’t really give her time, as we made the offer the afternoon of the interview. (Doesn’t usually work that fast, but I’m hiring an assistant, so it was mostly a gut/personality thing, and I liked her right away.)
I don’t want a thank you letter, e-mail, or smoke signal. They in fact make me feel uncomfortable because my decision on who is the best candidate is completely unemotional and as logical as I can make it. Even if their emotion is honest, it always seems like pandering for them to send this glowing letter to me thanking for my Christ-like wisdom in interviewing them. Plus, I it makes me feel bad to receive these letters when I’m only picking one out of 3 candidates.
First off, I work in HR, so I’m obviously biased here.
Secondly, do you seriously think that we sit there and think of bullshit things for employees and candidates to do, just because we feel like it? Do you seriously think we want to waste our time with it?
And just for your information, one of the reasons you have to fill out a job application is because you are required to SIGN it, stating that the information you wrote down is correct and we can term you if it turns out you’re lying.
Then ask me to sign a copy of my resume. Or staple my resume to a form stating that the information I provided during the application process was correct, and make me sign that. As long as you persist in making professionals fill out applications designed for grocery baggers, the rest of the world is going to persist in perceiving you as a waste of oxygen.
The thought does frequently cross my mind, and not just for the hiring process. I’ve had to fill out some amazingly bullshit forms over the years, forms obviously drawn up by someone who never had to fill them out him/hersef.
Frankly, the whole HR sector seriously needs some PR help.
So, as a prior poster said, have me sign the fucking resume I gave you. Or condense 10 pages of repetitive forms into just one or two with a single “sign here” line.
Yes, because it justifies the fact that you have a job. If the completely useless bullshit things that employees and candidates are made to do were eliminated, the HR department would become the Personnel secretary, and that would be the end of story for most of the people who are in HR - because they have no marketable skills and add absolutely no value to anything. They don’t create anything, they don’t produce anything, and they don’t add value to anything created or produced.
Really? Because the offer letter that I signed contained exactly the same verbiage regarding termination if it was discovered that I lied on my resume. So really, tell me, what the fuck was the point of making me fill out the job application? What on there was not covered by my resume, cover letter, interview, offer letter, non-compete agreement, non-disclosure agreement, W-4, I-9, and travel policy, all of which I was required to sign.
HR people are the guidance counselors of the grown up world. If they knew anything whatsoever about having a career, they would have one instead of being guidance counselors.
This just seems like bureaucratic bullshit – firing someone on a technicality (you signed this! ha-ha!) instead of for a real reason, like failing to do your job.
I take offense to the idea that “most” HR people have no marketable skills and add no value. Who do you think determined your compensation range or designed your benefits package or determined the strategic direction of your company’s hiring plan?
I understand that in some organizations, HR actively stands in the way of the managers – and tries to “protect the organization” by making things difficult for employees and management. But the idea that an entire career path is bullshit because you don’t like sending thank you notes – ridiculous.
Well, let’s see. My boss’s boss decided on my salary, and all the other salaries of the people in this office. The benefits package? They have consultants who do that. Seriously, it’s not done through HR. As for the hiring strategy, well, I was interviewed because I know a guy who works here. The HR person who is supposed to be recruiting for us has gotten 0 out of the last 10 hires in this office. Zero. It’s all been through people who work here recommending to our boss other people who we know. The point where HR gets involved? They call to let you know what time to show up on your first day.
It’s not the thank you notes that made it bullshit. The thank you notes are just one more piece of bullshit in the Great Wall of Bullshit that is HR.
How do you think your boss’s boss decided on your salary? Do you think he pulled it out of his ass? Who do you think works at the consultant’s office that designed your benefit package? Besides, your one bad experience doesn’t exactly make an entire group of people worthless. There are HR people who are good at their job and there are HR people who are bad at their job.
I’m sure it’s terribly difficult to look at monster.com and careerbuilder.com for software engineering positions in Pittsburgh and see what’s being advertised.
Well I’m pretty sure that the insurance one involves people who sell insurance, and I would bet that the investment company has people who, perhaps, are familiar with the stock market and investments and shit like that.
I have yet to meet one that’s more useful than tits on a boar hog.
The only way I see to be ‘good at’ HR is to convince people that HR is actually necessary.
Like women’s studies, liberal arts and philosophy majors. Sure.
The last two places I worked the boss decided on the salary. Come to think of it, neither of those companies have and HR department an manage to exist just fine.
Well, in one case it was her ass but let’s not get picky - basically, it was the same rate he/she paid other people for doing that same job.
I don’t get benefits at either of the two jobs I am currently working for. The prior one outsourced that work.
I’d say easily 3 out of 4 I’ve met aren’t worth shit.
No. But as far as I can see, huge parts of the entire ritual has zero bearing on matching candidates with position requirements, and everything to do with cutting down the number of applicants without getting into the time-consuming process of understanding job requirements and matching them with resumes.
Hence we go through, for instance, the tiresome process of customizing cover letters to indicate how much we’d go through to get the chance of pursuing a career with <insert company name>, how we’ve admired <company name>'s products and services for years and how being part of the <company name> team would be the pinnacle of our aspirations.
Or we memorize the correct answer to “Describe your biggest weakness.”
Or we send oh-so-sincere thank-you notes after the interview.
Yeah, it’s pretty much bullshit. Empty ritual, none of which does anything to match qualifications to requirements.
As far as I can tell, the wasted time is mostly on the part of the applicants.
In my experience, it’s used to fire with cause in other situations, like someone who made up all of her job history and a convicted violent felon who somehow passed the first background check. (There are both real cases in my company, the former I was very familiar with, the second I heard about.) In the former case, firing for cause would have been much more difficult and risked us paying out a lot in unemployment.
I tend to agree that a lot of HR people are generally useless. This isn’t always the fault of HR, however - they’re often kept out of the loop by the rest of the company in fear that they’re going to meddle or make things difficult. As much of a pain in the ass it is to deal with their paperwork and procedure and all that jazz, they have come immensely handy for me in a few cases where legal action was occurring or possible.
That said, I now work with a small company with no formal HR, and especially now I’m not managing anyone, I don’t miss it.
Of all the (in many cases, well-deserved) vitriol being flung at HR, I must say this:
At my present company, our HR rep is a very intelligent gay man. He’s absolutely excellent at his job. He dispenses with the unnecessary garbage and deals with problems head on. I have no complaints. It’s the first time in my career that I’ve been able to say that.
That being said, HR as a whole in my company sucks ass. We’re constantly getting e-mail “newsletters” from them on various irrelevant happenings and programs they’re introducing. It’s so bad that I have an Outlook rule that sends everything from HR into my Deleted Items folder.
IME, thank you notes help best when you weren’t exactly right for that position, but another position opens up - or even the hiring manager has a friend at another firm looking for someone. They happen infrenently enough to set you apart and be remembered.