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Continuing from my series on HR's uselessness. What can I say, HR is a permanent thing that fills me with rage.
This article for HR professionals about How to Conduct the Perfect Job Interview is more of a pipe dream than it is reality. But if most HR folks did what the article suggests, the whole field would gain a lot more respect. Unfortunately, this isn't the case and it seems like the field is littered by bad apples.
This isn't indicative of all HR people because I've also had some lovely experiences with HR as well.
But 8/10 times, my experience with HR has been abysmal and convinced me they were completely useless...here are some examples.
Pursuing you like you're the second coming and then suddenly going MIA for whatever reason
Worse than the Katy Perry "Hot n Cold" song because when they want you for a job you weren't even that keen on, they will send you messages at any time of day and keep talking about how a meeting with the hiring manager would be good even if you were iffy about the position. Then when you start doing the pursuing/following up, they completely ignore your emails. Not even a peep. Not even a :( to indicate you're no longer considered a candidate. Only in the HR world is just completely ignoring people acceptable, regardless if you're a job seeker or an employee. At least if you're an employee, you can escalate to the appropriate parties but not if you're a job seeker. You just look craycray sending follow up after follow up in the hopes of getting a response.
Interviewing for jobs they know nothing about
This doesn't happen everywhere obviously but in the world of somewhat technical jobs that use certain industry terms, you should have some idea so you know that the candidate knows how to perform the duties once actually in the job. When you're interviewing and explaining your previous duties, which MATCH UP EXACTLY WITH THE POSITION YOU'RE INTERVIEWING FOR, they might not "get it" and take you out of the running based on their interpretation of the role, which they know nothing about.
For example, performance media mentioning rich media has to do with display campaigns that use data (such as search data) to target the appropriate audiences on sites that are not primarily a search engine, just with search capabilities (almost all sites basically). Performance meaning it is an action based engagement not just viewing the impression. Just because it has the word "search" does not mean it is SEM/SEO. These terms have to do with advertising, usually text based but not always, on search engines or a social network and optimizing keywords on content pages, respectively. So because someone doesn't have SEO/SEM experience doesn't mean they are unqualified for performance media based jobs. Learn the difference if you're the person gatekeeping candidates from getting through to the next round.
Asking stupid questions
First, there is Google so you can Google the company that candidate is from and you're not familiar with. I've had recruiters ask me what my previous company was. Not what my role was on a day to day basis (though that is also on the resume) but "what is a Name of Company?" Now I know why people who make up company names and put themselves as VPs or Co-founders (yet when you look up the company on Linkedin, there is not a single other employee) get hired at places. The people in charge of being the gatekeeper of talent are just not making the effort to see what these companies the candidates worked for are about nor whether they actually exist.
This is also why you sometimes end up working with such inexperienced, with no motivation to get better, colleagues - it's because the recruitment process is a failure and leaving good candidates out while bringing in BS candidates in.
