Career News 24/7: The Cynical Girl: Human Resources, Technology, and a Scammy Email

Friday, September 23, 2011

The Cynical Girl: Human Resources, Technology, and a Scammy Email

Human Resources, Technology, and a Scammy Email

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 03:45 AM PDT

This appeared in my email inbox.

I think people who work in any Human Resources Department are lazy. Furthermore, I believe that a big part of America's economy fail due to people not being able to find jobs starts at Human Resources. Here is how: Let us say I apply online, which most jobs require now, and my application is received by a computer generated system which is overlooked by people who work in Human Resources. Those computers or people go through the application and resume if submitted and highlight certain key words or phrases and that's how applications are determined if they are worthy enough for interview material. Now, here's my problem with this. Those Human Resources people may not know jack squat about someone's work history. There might be some real relevant experience shown in the resume but is overlooked because the computer or Human Resources individual is not familiar with a certain area of prior work experience. So, that application is going to be kicked aside and a generated email will be sent out to inform you that your application will be kept on file. Now how is possible that someone has 8 years of experience in the exact same career field that they are applying for and receive an email saying that they did not meet the qualifications. Well, this is a problem. There are thousands upon thousands of people with substantial work experience that are being denied everyday due to this FACT. If people are so blind to see this, then there is a much bigger problem in America than what we thought. People, yes may be lazy and not want to work, but for the ones who try the Human Resources Department is hurting the job hunting for Americans. What ever happened to walk-in-applying? What happened to managers actually interviewing everyone for a fair chance to get the job? What Happened To Equality?

Uhm, yeah.

So my first response is that HR sits in the center of a discussion on work, power, politics and money… but we don’t own that discussion. If you want to be mad at someone, get mad at the politicians who take money from corporations to maintain the status quo. Get mad at the pundits and analysts who go on TV and pretend like they know something about job growth. Be mad at the supervisors and managers who keep rolling over — and complaining about the cost of fair pay, unions, and reasonable safety protections — instead of bagging on the crappy management and a lack of leadership that got us into this mess in the first place.

And be mad at yourself for the sheer fact that you complained about HR on a progressive HR website — written by an author and an activist who is working to improve HR — and you don’t realize the comedy in it.

So that’s my first response.

Now here’s where things get interesting. As I started to post this article, I stripped away the HTML coding for this email and lo & behond the file was embedded with some links for an ATS system and a resume writing software solution.

WTF? What am I? New?

Some chump with SEO clients is pretending to be angry with HR as an opportunity to sneak in links into this post. Really. Ugh. You know it’s conference season when amateur stuff like this goes down. It’s no Anna Rodriquez but it sure is weird. (And for the record, the Anna Rodriquez story is kind of epic in the history of HR and technology. Read about it here.)

But in any event, plenty of people hate HR for the perception that some dumpy chick is the unqualified gatekeepers of resumes. I say that the dumpy chick in HR is the gatekeeper of donuts but she rarely plays a part in the screening and selection of resumes.

So get off her back.

And don’t try to use my blog to create crappy backlinks for your clients unless you’re prepared to pay me $50/month. Or you can pay me in donuts.