Reader's Digest Human Resources opini

RANT

I read the piece on Reader's Digest article on April 2011: 50 Secrets Your HR Person Won't Tell You.

And I was horrified.

Had these people worked for me, I'd have fired half of them easy. Who do they think they are? Do you think you can just act anyway you want? This reminds me of a scrape I had with a local HR manager who worked for a local big company who will remain nameless. Basically, at one point I said that his rude and unprofessional behavior will act as a turnoff for potential employees and that only losers will work for the company. There will be huge adjustment going down, unless he cleans up his act. He responded by doing ad hominem attacks on me.

Let's see how much wrong these HR can be:

1. Once you're unemployed for 6 months, you're unemployable. There goes somebody leaving the company to take care of his ailing mother! Of course, this is easily circumvented by putting down something like: "Taking a motorcycle vacation trip around the US" or something like that.

2. If you trying to get a job at a specific company, avoid HR entirely. Yep, you got that right. HR is so worthless, I just don't see how they do anything but fill the company with employees' buddies.

3. Three pages of resume is pushing it. This sounds like a great way to filter out highly experienced, highly productive candidate. Of course, if all HR do is match keywords, then 2 pages is sufficient.

4. I haven't read [a cover letter] in 11 years. If I was slacking on the job, I wouldn't advertise it to the world. Cover letters are there for a reason. Read them.

5. A lot of managers don't want to hire people with young kids, and use all sort of tricks to find that out illegally. I don't want to have to deal with anything illegal. It's bad for the company.

6. Sometimes [we lie] just to get you off our back. You know, I'd have fired these guys. Never, ever tell a lie. It discredits you and your company.

7. If there was someone we no longer wanted at the company, ... set him up to fail, and document that. You know, people aren't the fools you make them to be. They will know that is what you're doing. Then they shoot and kill you, before killing themselves. This should be obvious, but apparently not. Thus, we have people going crazy and shoot people all the time.

8. [Something said] that CEO took as an insult. See#7 for what's going to happen if you're being a jerk.

Yes, so the conclusion is that people cheat, lie, and otherwise engaged is abusive behavior. I'm not saying all HR personnel are bad. I certainly know a few good ones. But the bad ones are the ones getting the spotlight, right? And they set the tone for the company. If I was the owner, I'd make sure my HR personnels are all angels, who has good people skills and truly care about the employees.

Oh, and about that rude local HR manager? The company just had a huge adjustment going down. That's too bad, because it reflects poorly on the whole industry, but what can we do?

Well, it's not a nice thing for me to say "I told you so." but...

I told you so.