John Linton ....making a comeback?.....or did it never go away for some companies?
I was sent a link to this article yesterday:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html
which was interesting in a sort of odd ball way but it jogged my mind on another of Google's much read recommendations that is described here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10296177/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/
which I looked up and re-read and then considered for a minute or two before, yet again, wondering who dreams up this sort of arrant nonsense and then how on Earth does it get published? I would be the first to agree that I am probably long past the age where flexibility of mind is one of my principal capabilities but I would not agree that is the case because of anything other than longer experience and far more knowledge gained over the past ten years rather than the hardening of mental 'arteries'.
It is quintessentially stupid to make such broad brush statements about the infinitely complex and impossible to decipher vagaries of human interaction. Perhpas the writer of that tosh (or based on the underlying principles being pushed), the writers of that tosh was/were using irony as a dissemblance - but I very much doubt it. My views of human resources departments have been expressed many times before but to refressh your memory I think:
The first Human Resources Departments was created to serve a two fold purpose. It's first purpose was to find employment for people within the company that were incapable of actually doing anything productive for the company. The second purpose, and the reason such incompetent people weren't just fired for non-performance, was that they could hide the fact that most if not all line managers within the company hadn't got the slightest idea of how to select new employees and by placing that responsibility in the hands of another department could be absolved from any blame for selecting new employees who didn't work out.
This in turn led to the newly created Human Resources department being forced to invent the 'hiring via committee system" in place of a rational hiring process done by that rare individual who might actually know how to do it. Under the 'committee system' several people were required to interview a potential new employee thus formally splitting the blame for wrong hiring decisions among as many people as possible and further obsuring the fact that if it's hard to find one person with the skills to hire new employees how do you actually improve that by using multiple people who don't possess those skills? A committee system actually ensures you hire the very worst candidate for any position because of the way basic human nature works.
My view is that few people are 'good at hiring' but that adding more people who 'aren't good at hiring' to a hiring process isn't going to improve anything - it can only make it much worse. The only person who should hire new personnel for any company is one of two choices:
1) If there is a person with a demonstrable track record of making good hiring choices then he/she should do the hiring.
2) If there isn't a person like 1) above then the only person who should hire is the manager whose job depends upon the people for whom they are responsible working effetively.
Problem solved.........
.....but of course that doesn't happen in many, if any, 'modern' companies where ever increasingly sophisticated methodologies and processes have been developed over the last 63 years to ensure the maximum amount of money possible is spent on hiring the least suitable people from any applicant list - or that's how it seems to me.
While I seldom get involved in hiring people for Exetel these days (and we definitely don't have an HR department or even person and I am content that we use method 2 above) I did do the hiring of the sales trainees we selected three months ago. Because of the process expected by applicants these days I did actually interview/have a chat with prospective employees and I did try to make that interview time of a respectable length. My view hasn't changed that you can determine from a reasonably informative resume whether the applicant will be hired or not and nothing can be learned in an interview that will change that view (other than some highly unlikely personal characteristics of the applicant).
Nothing has changed. Bright, well educated, self motivated people from a sensible background will do well - others won't. Everything a prospective employer needs to know should be in the resume or should be capable of being found out via two or three questions at the interview. Why is a 'committee' needed? It clearly isn't.
Maybe you have to have 20,000 employees and sell a product that has no material cost to produce to need to do the things referenced in the first article and you have lost touch so completely with what is actually going on in your company that you really do the 10 things cited in the second article.
PS: By the way, did you notice the MAJOR give away in the second article that the author(s) obviously had absolutely no credibility in what they said because of one MASSIVELY incorrect and stupid statement?