Long or Short Capital has a wonderfully mean-spirited article that outlines all the reasons why they don’t like Human Resources personnel.
http://longorshortcapital.com/bear-vs-shark-the-corporate-edition-hr-vs-it.htm
It is closest thing to working for the government outside of…working for the
government. The whole department is an entrenched intracorporate bureaucracy
which spends its days finding cipherlike ways to spend money, mainly to justify
its own existence.
The best lesson I got from my time with HBC (even better than “how not to run a large retail chain”) was the personality evaluation program they used, that categorized people’s attitudes and behaviors on a colour wheel. Integral to the program was learning to identify types, both your own, and your colleagues’, and learn what techniques and approaches would improve communication and collaboration with the rest of the management team, as well as the rank-and-file. This kind of cookie cutter binder filler is the bread-and-butter for freelance management consultants (and I should know), but the program had merit, and the tools it gave me did help my interpersonal skills a great deal. In fact, if I had some of its insight when I was still with Sony, I would have benefited greatly.
I’ll spare you the details, except for what’s relevant to the discussion at hand: HR Managers and business unit Managers will never mesh successfully without a lot of conscious effort by both sides to communicate more effectively. Successful management types tend to be doers, and for them talking is a prelude to action. You are either taking orders or you are giving them. Communication beyond giving and receiving directives is seen as a burden and a waste of time. And when faced with a problem, they decide on a solution. HBC called these people Reds. On the other hand, HR types are talkers. They seek consensus. They want to know how everybody feels about an issue. And when a challenging situation comes along, they dither, prevaricate, and start throwing policies around. HBC called these people Greens.
Management meetings at HBC were three to eight hour-long marathon sessions of watching the Reds try to burn through the agenda items for the week, while the Greens fought for airtime, and dragged meetings out with interminable digressions and off-topic interjections, while looking for an excuse to set off one petty turf war or another. It was during these
Taking this topic off on another tangent, I’ve got this to say about recruiting: Your first mistake is having an HR department. Your second mistake is letting HR hire your people for you. Firms that make hiring decisions by permitting the HR department to subject candidates to batteries of tests, whether legitimate psychometrics like MBTI and Strong Interest, or ersatz wishy-washy multiple guess quizzes cribbed from Chatelaine magazine don’t just do so out of corporate inertia. Far worse, the firm doesn’t trust the judgment and gut-instincts of its managers. I can tell war stories all day about candidates for sales jobs whose applications I disqualified after one interview, only to have HR (or in one case, my District Manager) dig their résumé out of the trash. They then either shoehorned me into giving them a second interview, or even hired them behind my back and dumped them on me. I’ve made my share of bad calls in my life (Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment), but I’ve made more good hires than bad. Every weak candidate I’ve had handed to me by fait a compli has not worked out in the long run.
So to summarize, I’m not a fan of Human Resources. Or sharks. Bears will win, every time.
Any HR professionals who feel I’m being unkind are welcome to submit a rebuttal. Sphere: Related Content
2 comments:
HR people tend to be deluded and overblow both their worth as a human being and as a cog in the corporate machine.
Funny thing, though, both HR and Management operate under that delusion that they are good at their jobs. A good HR person and a good manager are both a rare breed of employee. Most managers are, at best, mediocre, and seem to possess that unique self-confidence only the truly incompetent have. Almost all HR people have that very same modus operandi.
And, since I've known several HR folks, they are indeed offended and flabbergasted when you toss their own personal candidate's resume into the trash. After all, they are a Human Resource Professional.
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment"
Trademark this!! Great sentence!
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