HR companies/people?

[MisterD]

Well MrsD is an HR professional for a somewhat of a Kiwi icon company that I won't name...and really you should hear her opinion of recruitment companies...swears more than me, she does...nearly as much as Flatcap's missus...

[mynameis]

Wonders why there are so many successful recruitment companies around and doing well and the number of companies using them to do their recruitment ..... do be do be dooo

[jrandom]

The good recruiters are really good. A couple over the years have found me better jobs that I didn't even apply for.

What he said.

Good recruiters aren't 'HR' people. At least not in my experience. They're guys with decades of industry experience who (sometimes unintentionally) slide into hiring and referring (within their industry) rather than doing the work themselves.

I've never met a 'professional HR' person who wasn't, at least in that respect, a waste of oxygen.

[scracha]

Is it just me...or are HR [recruitment type] companies/departments...full of really dumb people!!

Is that the reason Employers can't find good staff?? because they hire retards to do it for them?? and when I say retards...I am actually being really nice!

Yeah mate. Absolute fucktards the lot of them.

I got into a lotta trouble once for publicly questioning an HR manager (yankeedoodle bluechip co so they had some "vice president" moniker or some bullshit like that) who sent everyone in the company an email asking when they started working at the company. This is a day after they announced 20,000 redundancies. Hardly morale boosting and FFS, if the HR department can't keep records of when employees started then you've really got to question their purpose in life?

At least the majority of them are reasonably attractive ladies as they've got no other redeeming attributes.

[want-a-harley]

My brother in law is super intelligent, but, is for some reason wasting his brain in HR. Anyway he's just finished his masters and said half of it is basically protecting your job

[R6_kid:Me]

At least the majority of them are reasonably attractive ladies as they've got no other redeeming attributes.

That was the one saving grace of the last temp agency I used... nothing like having beautiful women delivering you dunkin donuts once a month and wanting to have a chat to see how things are going.

[RantyDave]

The good recruiters are really good.

If one is a computer nerd, or a contract computer nerd, then recruiters perform a very important task: They schmooze and lunch and golf and drink and set up corporate bullshit events so they can have "face time" with the people who may or may not be getting an enormous fuck-off pile of money to spend on nerds ... so I don't have to. And this takes them a whole shitload of time, months and months and months, but it does mean that one can go from not having a job to having one in six months less than it might have otherwise taken. For this they take 15-20 percent IIRC.

It's actually a reasonably efficient retail operation in many ways. The markup on clothes is 50% or so and if you go to work full time for some big consulting gig they'll pay you $50/hr, charge you out at $150/hr and snort the difference off the bonnet of their Ferrari. Or, worse, spend it on completely extraneous members of staff or "middle management" as they like to be called.

So, yeah, an industry full of vacuous narcissistic men in their late 40's who don't know the first thing about the jobs they are recruiting into. But they do know about getting the right people drunk and pretending to be their mate and for that, they are worth it.

Dave

[Oakie]

I'm in HR and am responsible for recruiting for my employer. We have on occasion used HR companies but don't anymore because the results weren't great (except for when they hired me that way of course!)
Two things:
1) Bloody hard for a third party to select the right people. It's challenging enough doing it for a company I know intimately. Don't know how an external recruiter can do it well.
2) The tricky part about the interview process is that people tend to exagerate their ability and minimise their shortcomings. It's no wonder then that some bad apples get through the system. The fun part about interviewing is weeding out these guys. Sometimes you get a feeling that they're hiding something and then it becomes like a game of chess trying to get to the bottom of it. Quite a buzz some times.Reference checking usually sorts out any other baddies that get through the first interviews but occasionally referees will also exagerate or minimise.

Trust me, recruiting is a whole lot harder than just picking the best looking CV or the person you liked best in the interviews.

[jimevo]

Recruiters are match makers... matching the perfect talent to an employer who is willing to pay 20%+ of the agreed annual salary (current rate in the U.S.) is not easy at all. There are plenty of cowboys out there for sure but I firmly believe it's still up to the applicant to be that pefect fit for the job... the recruiter is really just there to make things happen!

[BarBender]

Is it just me...or are HR [recruitment type] companies/departments...full of really dumb people!! Is that the reason Employers can't find good staff?? because they hire retards to do it for them?? and when I say retards...I am actually being really nice!

Some are good Poos but unfortunately there are those out there that pull the profession down.
At a departmental level, recruitment can be an entry level HR function that is largely transactional and so accessible for all types (and often those with the wrong skill set) to get into the HR profession.

You shake and roll the dice in terms of consultants. The better ones either (i) specialise; (ii) are well resourced and thus expensive; or (iii) manage to successfuly balance holding up a business/cost centre while delivering good candidates and keeping clients happy.

Just like there are bikes and bikes, mechanics and mechanics!
There are different degrees of quality in Human Resource services.
Unfortunately I think there are probably more poor ones than there are good ones!
New Zealand is not known for it's quality managers!

Hole in one. Managers could know how to recruit! It could save someone some money.

What he said.
Good recruiters aren't 'HR' people. At least not in my experience. They're guys with decades of industry experience who (sometimes unintentionally) slide into hiring and referring (within their industry) rather than doing the work themselves.
I've never met a 'professional HR' person who wasn't, at least in that respect, a waste of oxygen.

Thank God I've never had to deal with you on a professional level Dan!!

[Blackbird]

I'm in HR and am responsible for recruiting for my employer.

I have no issue with recruitment being undertaken by HR in conjunction with staff from the department who needs someone. I do, however, have a real issue with the the ethics/lack of rigour shown during restructuring.

Before I retired, I was a manager with one of NZ's biggest manufacturers. As part of one of many restructures, the Group HR manager came up with a stupid idea for another area which would indirectly have an adverse impact on our team's productivity. I asked for the justification after tabling the likely impact, received bluster but no facts and then the prick tried to tell our CEO that I wasn't "forward thinking" to belittle me.

Fortunately, HR didn't get its way on this occasion but it was a close thing and I was pretty disappointed that a dumb plan was allowed to go so far without measurable data.

And don't get me started about HR having responsibility for staff development.....

I feel a lot better now...

[Hitcher]

And don't get me started about HR having responsibility for staff development...

Any organisation that delegates that level of authority to an HR department deserves everything it gets. HR practitioners should be advisers and administrators. They should not be allowed to get in the way of normal day to day relationships between managers and their staff. Their role is to support those relationships, not do them.

[vifferman]

Any organisation that delegates that level of authority to an HR department deserves everything it gets. HR practitioners should be advisers and administrators. They should not be allowed to get in the way of normal day to day relationships between managers and their staff. Their role is to support those relationships, not do them.

Yet too often HR people are at the executive level in companies, when the role rarely requires that level of seniority. Our (part-time) HR person was on the executive of our company, before she did what many HR people do, and used her position to get a better job in the parent company. Now she's even more senior, gets paid more, and we see her in here a couple of days a month. She doesn't actually seem to be available for HR-type work - just flits into her office, schmoozes with the managers, flits out again. Often most of the staff don't know she's here.
Probably just as well - she's not a particularly good 'people person', as although she's personable enough, she's just not a good listener.

As for agencies - the one most of our employees are recruited through are very good. Shame that the people here who conduct the in-company interviews are so crap. The thing to remember about agencies is they are agents, and like all agents, their main objective is their commission.

[Hitcher]

Yet too often HR people are at the executive level in companies, when the role rarely requires that level of seniority.

I'll disagree with you on that point. HR is an extremely important and particularly vital aspect of organisational performance. Performance management systems, staff development and training, occupational safety and health, negotiation of collective employment agreements, payroll and other matters don't just happen by themselves.

There is a significant strategic aspect to HR around retention and recruitment which involves more than making sure people get paid on time and bunging ads in the paper when there's a vacancy.

[jim.cox]

Every time I hear the term "HR" I think "Human Remains"