Friday 3 August 2012

Recruitment - The Waste

The economy is in a mess and it seems it is mainly the politicians who are struggling to cope, industry just gets on with it's job. Clearly the issue is between the pillocks in parliament and the hordes of useless and costly bureaucrats 13 years of Labour has saddled us with. Generally a Conservative government comes in to clear it up, but today we don't have that, we have a coalition and the Conservative bit is run by David Cameron! Disastrous.

But that is not quite the end of it, something has infected of workplace, in the private sector. Ultimately it's roots can be traced back to Left ideology but it has taken on something of a disguise and pretends to some respectability. It is a branch of Political Correctness I suppose and is an adjunct of the red tape that is strangling business.

What I speak of is the poor state of recruitment in this country. Recruitment agencies are a raw barometer of the way recruitment is carried out as it just reacts to circumstance. So, whilst not without blame it, as an industry is just doing what it has to, to survive.

The real problem lies in the power of Human Resources. This powerful political group in any company can be a friend or foe both to the economy and it's own employer. Originally the 'Personnel' department looked after the employee side of a business, making sure relations were handled within the law and maintaining records of disciplinary matters etc. The department was important but served the company and the hiring Managers.

But as legislation affecting employment increased, whether as a result of bored politicians looking for something to do or the meddling of the EU, so the nature of the beast changed. Personnel became Human Resources, the better to reflect their new found power within a company. No executive dared go against HR, nor seek to make changes without their approval. HR pushed a number of agendas, all legally based but ultimately damaging.

No HR person concerns themselves with the utility of any measure they insist upon, nor its impact. Instead it reflects their importance. And blunt the company they certainly do. I remember a chap who had been a HR Director with a large IT outsourcing company saying his view was that HR was the 'contraceptive on the prick of progress'. A little colourful perhaps, but true nonetheless. Recruiters called them 'recruitment prevention officers'.

This was in the Nineties when the rise of HR was only just starting. As this Left wing based industry undermined its paymasters, so it decided to further extol its importance. Clearly the hiring of staff was a job beneath their dignity, it was little more than a paper exercise, time consuming and of little interest. Worse it seemed to maintain the 'servant' status of their department; it was hived off. HR set up a separate recruitment arm to handle this mundane activity, hiring ex-agency staff.

The recruitment process for HR (whether they handle it themselves or instruct a recruitment section) became ever more bureaucratic. Either the person seeking a job had to fill out a fairly pointless and usually carelessly designed Application Form or a CV would be accepted on its own. These would be received against a published Job Specification that was either written by HR, to conform to their ideas of whom the company should employ, with a nod to any technical qualifications the role may require or they would instruct a hiring manager how to do his own.

The Spec usually contains some 'must haves' which aren't often essential but would be a good pointer. HR give a cursory glance to incoming CV's against these and any lack means it gets no further. The Application Form is worse as it rarely allows the candidate to explain how they are suitable for the job at all. For HR it is just an exercise in getting the paper from one side of the desk to the other.

A hiring Manager chooses his candidates to interview from a pile decided on by HR, who neither understand the job role nor the candidate. They have no interest in acquiring the best candidate, they just want to clear their desk (or Inbox these days).

If a hiring Manager gets to speak to the outside world an entirely different process takes place. Rarely does the actual needs of that Manager match what is published in a Job Spec (indeed good recruitment consultants get a better feel for what the company wants than even the Manager realises, because they talk to other companies with similar needs).

The recruitment of a new employee takes on a whole new dimension and often completely different people get interviewed. This is rare however. And it is the stranglehold that HR have insisted upon on the way people are recruited that has undermined the stength of many UK companies.

Recruitment agencies now rarely bother with the quality of a candidate or suitability, they just box tick (to the delight of HR, who supply the boxes to tick) and send off volumes; something should stick. Needless to say, HR feel this lack of 'targeted' quality in incoming CV's is due to the low quality of recruiters (fast becoming true, due to their actions) and improves their facetious opinion of their own superiority.

It doesn't need to be like this and it is damaging Britain. When you come across a dedicated HR professional, who sees the job very much as supporting the company, it is an absolute delight.

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