- Question: Throughout my career I have gotten new jobs by meeting and talking to managers who would be my bosses. Now I keep running into the human resources roadblock in companies where I'd like to talk to a manager about a job. Honestly, I just don't see the reason for silly online application forms or for "screeners" who don't understand the work I do, when companies complain they cannot find the right talent. I really don't get it.
Why do companies even have HR departments involved in hiring?
cliffelam -You seem to be swimming in these waters of late...
I thought it was a known thing that the purpose of a resume was to get past HR so that you could interview with the people who would actually hire you. Granted, I've been out of the game for six glorious years, but HR was a known roadblock to success back when Clinton was president. Don't think they don't know it, either. Having put a social worker through grad school, lots of her cohort went into HR. They were unhappy. Lots of her friends came from HR. They were unhappy. There's a chick who keeps trying to connect with me on LinkedIn and each and every time I have to go "bitch, the last interaction we had was you laying me off." Sad thing is, as that particular industry was small, many of the people at that job had been laid off by her in the past from other jobs. She seemed like a nice enough person, but fundamentally useless in all things. And you don't hang with the hangman, you know?
I see HR as bureaucrats and not much else. I know that they serve some function, but I haven't quite figured out what. Its awesome that HR always gets to decide whom to cut. That way, the HR dept seems to never shrink, even though they're by far the most expendable people from a production standpoint. By that I mean, I can file paperwork, but an HR rep can't do brain surgery on a rat (or whatever the technical details of your work are).
I think you've answered your own question. Would you rather do brain surgery on rats or shuffle paper around? It is unfortunate that separating administration from real work puts most of the power in the hands of administrators, but they are sparing you from work you really don't want to do.
The way that the company I'm currently with works is this: Submit your resume to HR, a recruiter takes in the resume and processes your information. From there it is sent to the Supervisor of the position you're applying to, who looks over the resume and decides if you should be interviewed. You then have the chance of going through a series of interviews involving HR, the Supervisor, and even higher up employees. It's a bit bloated of a system, but still much better than having HR take care of everything.