I couldn't agree more with the author - there is a whole industry out there that trots out useless mumbo-jumbo in an attempt to sound impressive to its clients. They add ZERO.

The fact is HR "practitioners" (for want of a better word) out there are useless to their clients whenever they speak generically or according to some predetermined template. I work in an organisation that has had some dealings with HR contractors. After their focus groups - whose main activity revolved around a spruiker giving a pep talk with the backdrop of butcher's paper on the walls with targets drawn on them - there was nothing of value to show for one's attendance. I'd have thought that value would only have been generated if the HR staff had studied the work/profile/needs/etc of the organisation and tailored their courses to suit.

But that would take knowledge on the part of the HR company. And work.

Such outfits have about as much credibility as tarot card readers or itinerant gypsies doing work on your house.

I'm with you BN. One swallow does not a summer make. The same could be said about, oh, any career in the service industry. Can we pick on waiters next?

This is the type of article that I look forward to on OLO. One where the author manages to demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

Mind you, it is not entirely his fault.

He has the same weird delusion of anyone who thinks that what they read in the free commuter newspapers is unvarnished reality, that HR's entire function is recruitment. It isn't, as any business that has a properly functioning HR department will tell you.

(Incidentally, a business generally gets the HR it deserves; the worse-managed the business, the poorer the HR. It is the effect, not the cause).

The recruitment "industry" is his real target, and I have a great deal of sympathy with his frothings against this particular wart on the bum of commerce. All the sins he rails at - from the impenetrable jargon to blind faith in Myer-Briggs - are lodged here.

Anyone who goes "into recruitment" with the view that their people-skills will make a difference become very quickly disabused of the notion. It is a volume game, only. Sign up the jobhunters to stick in your body-inventory, put them through the jargon sausage-machine, then flog them to businesses who are too lazy or incompetent to manage their own intake.

But the other aspect of this holier-than-thou burst of self-promotion is its staggering lack of understanding of business.

>>For individual job hunters, the secret to getting a job is cold calling and asking for an appointment to pitch your skills<<

If I want a storeman, or an accountant, or a marketing manager, it is a decision that I come to after careful evaluation... then, and only then, do I go to the market to find one. I really don't want people knocking on my door on spec., to "pitch their skills".

All in all, a spectacular spray against entirely the wrong target.

Not bad for thirty minutes' work, though.

Including thinking time.

Some fab posts here from people obviously in the recruitment industry. I bet that's the first time they've hit a keyboard in anger in the last 10 years.

HR Office - Boss: What's got Wally so stirred up?
Hireling: Someone is attacking the HR industry.
Boss: Not again! Prepare to defend the indefensible.

I read Michael Burge's story in The Aust recently about being messed around by recruiters - he took the same angle. The very lowest common denominator in Australian bureaucratic life is HR.

Congrats to OLO for publishing such a penetrative expose. It's about time these wallies were sent packing.

The problem here is generalization on two levels.
• There are almost as many versions and responsibilities to HR as there are companies.
• There is almost as much quality variability as there are HR departments.
Some observations I would make (albeit generalized) are
• In large companies they have too much power often to be in touch with the realities of the coal face and not enough at higher level to affect much.
• Senior management often don’t understand what HR is and what functions they NEED. Much less know how to hire a good one.
• Let alone how to assess one.
Many of the problems the author rightly identifies are therefore more likely faults in the company snr management not having any real HR knowledge. Often job specs for these positions are written by ‘consultants’ that have no real understanding of the nature of the business. Consequently the department is created on a bureaucratic model ‘one size fits no one’. Many work on standardization in the belief that this will solve all problems. It doesn’t.

Want a tea lady take std TL1 give it to the girl to cut and paste …oops she doesn’t need a HDV licence? I must have taken TD1! Training and appropriate staff comes to mind.
Then there are those aptitude tests. If they have the answer it must have been a silly question. They have more caveats than a lawyer’s wet dream.

Simply put people and jobs aren’t standardized. I remember asking for a bench jockey and because of lack of understanding in issues like transfer skills they come up with zilch. My senior tech review the discarded resumes and found 4 acceptable candidates…we hired two. Good salesmen are equally difficult to standardize and a successful one even harder.
These comments cover only some elements but space precludes more.
In short HR departments are do have their place but they are often misunderstood, misdirected, miss-focused , and under staffed for what they’re often expected to do.

Not sure what you're trying to prove, Mr Smith.

>>99% of industry is BS<<

You're not welcome here, Wayne, crawl back under the rock you came from

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,20551434-3102,00.html

Graham, please feel free to delete this message as soon as you have rid our pages of this parasite who is currently posting here using your name.