Jobs and More HR Ranting

I quit my temp-to-perm job this week. I tried and tried to find a way to work in an environment I found repellent, and finally gave up. They said they loved my ideas and appreciated my knowledge and experience, then put me under the micromanaging supervision of a complete asswipe, who delighted in playing painfully obvious mindgames and in being generally obnoxious, i.e. rifling through my desk every time I got up to go to the bathroom, or whatever. What passed for leadership just stared at me and tried to spin it to being my fault. Ugh. Who needs this "Office Space" shit? Not I, friends. Life is too short and too cruel anyway.

Luckily, I am the recipient of daily recruiter emails; I interviewed with a great firm and I'll hear tomorrow if I got it. It would be doing the same thing I've been doing for a couple of years, something I enjoy doing and have no difficulty with.

It's strange: I remember the long-ago days of people staying in the same job for 10, 20, 50 years. Layoffs, Recession, and the Internet Age have changed the work climate so much. People know, reflexively, the Company doesn't care about them, and they're unfortunately right. It's every man/woman for themselves, in every industry and at every level. In NYC, you see this everywhere you go, on every weary face on the subway and in the urban uniformed hordes stampeding down the streets.

I've lived in a small town, a mega-suburb, and the Greatest City on Earth. Hell, I've even lived on an island. Outside Gotham, people are polite and smiling, they volunteer and they go to church. But when it comes to work and their jobs, Americans seem universally despondent.

A revolution is needed. Enough with the Wal-Mart-ization of America, enough with the mind-boggling corruption at the highest levels of corporations. A huge portion of America is motivated by what they call the Puritan Work Ethic. This idea is credited with making America great. Outsourcing jobs to foreign countries seems rather counter-productive. CEOs need to re-read (if they've ever read) their Mission Statements. Prioritize happy employees over Executive benefits and bonuses. Think long-term investment over short-term, high-yield risk.

Oh, and HR needs a huge demotion. They are NOT management. They are a service to management. HR people should never have any decision-making power, it is a clear conflict of interest. I should know, I studied the ins-and-outs of HR Management in Business School and I am an HR professional. People should be hired the old-fashioned way: recruiting, interviewing, selection process, hiring. Whoever came up with the idea of invading applicant's privacy BEFORE they are even hired, should be tarred and feathered. And then killed. Beyond checking references and performing a criminal background check, no other information is needed from an applicant. Ted Bundy would've passed a standard HR background check with flying colors. Wouldn't he be a great addition to the Marketing Department?

Did you know that every inquiry on your credit report lowers your overall score? So if you're on an interview blitz and signing away your consent, those jobs you don't get are negatively affecting your credit. Ask management why a credit report is necessary for applicants to the company. Unless you work for the government, or a banking or financial institution, they won't have a reasonable answer.

What happened is a proliferation of background checking companies. HR types, delighted at the prospect of handing over a big part of their job to someone else, convince management to buy. Management smiles and nods at HR's blah-blah-blah filled with buzzwords and lingo and thinks about their promotion prospects from this deal. HR suddenly gains a falsely inflated sense of their own importance and starts generating forms and reports and pie charts. Business schools recognize prime opportunity when they see it and start creating HR Management classes and seminars that are chock-a-block with bullshit, but get those HR types a certificate they can preen about with.

Meanwhile, you're a hardworking applicant who was laid off, or had a medical emergency, or some other disaster, that garnered you rough credit and financial difficulty. If you are a fashion designer or legal secretary or a database manager, why the fuck would it matter? It does because HR deemed it. Do you really want any manager in your company to see your credit report, good or bad? It's private, and unless they're thinking of giving you a fat loan, it ain't none of their damn business.

:end rant: