I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a manager complain, āThe HR department included āmust have college degreeā in the job req even though I donāt careā or āThey asked for 5 years of...
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a manager complain, āThe HR department included āmust have college degreeā in the job req even though I donāt careā or āThey asked for 5 years of experience in a technology thatās only been around for 3ā or āI have no idea why they rejected this candidate without even contacting me.ā
Still, in many cases you donāt have a choice. If you want to hire someone, you need to deal with HR, at least to a small degree ā especially if you work in a big company.
So Iām writing a feature story for technology managers, collecting real-world advice from people who learned their lessons the hard way. Hereās the questions Iād like you to answer:
⢠Tell me about a frustration you had with the HR department (in regard to hiring). That is, tell me a personal story of HR-gone-wrong. Because we all love schadenfreude, and that gives me an emotional example with which to begin.
⢠Letās say you have a new opening in your department. In what ways do you involve HR? (That could be anything from, āgive them general guidelines and let them choose the best candidates for me to interviewā to āI do the search myself, and use HR only for on-boarding.ā) What makes you choose that path? How much choice do you have in the matter?
⢠What weaknesses have you discovered in your HR departmentās ability to serve the needs of a tech-focused department?
⢠What have you done to cope with those weaknesses? Which of those efforts worked, and which failed?
⢠What do you wish you knew ānā years ago about dealing with your companyās HR department?
⢠So that I can give the reader some context: Let me know how to refer to you in the article (at least, āEsther, a software architect at a Midwest insurance companyā), and give me some idea of your company size (because the processes appropriate for a 70-person company arenāt the same for one with 7,000 employees).
You donāt have to answer all those questions! I asked these to get the conversation going. Tell me as much or as little as you like.
Please donāt assume that I think HR always sucks. However, there isnāt as much to learn from āwhy HR is your friend.ā The idea here is to help techie managers cope when HR doesnāt offer what you hoped for.