SPUG: HR problems & solutions (off topic)

[James Moore]

I've never worked for a non-high-tech company, so your mileage may vary.

HR people have little or no impact on the hiring process once you've got 
an interview.  Be completely innocuous with them.  No one  cares about 
their opinion, and they have virtually no say in whether or not you get 
hired.  In fact, I don't ever recall them even having an opinion to care 
about or not.  Their job is to go through fairly simple checklists like 
"are you actually willing to move to the city where the job is located?" 
and to push paper around to make sure everyone's 401k money goes to the 
right place.  It's useful paper pushing, and I'm glad someone other than 
me likes to do it, but don't think they're the reason you're going to 
get a job or not.  Some places they're heavily involved in the salary 
negotiations, but that's only after other people decided they want you.

In a large company, they can slow down or speed up the actual hiring 
process once someone else has made a decision.  They're the people who 
do things like make sure there's actually an open rec for you to fill. 
 But they're only going to turn you down for internal business reasons 
(i.e., someone yanked the budget for your position without telling the 
hiring manager), not because they think you're (in)competent.

 - James


 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
     POST TO: spug-list at pm.org       PROBLEMS: owner-spug-list at pm.org
      Subscriptions; Email to majordomo at pm.org:  ACTION  LIST  EMAIL
  Replace ACTION by subscribe or unsubscribe, EMAIL by your Email-address
 For daily traffic, use spug-list for LIST ;  for weekly, spug-list-digest
     Seattle Perl Users Group (SPUG) Home Page: http://zipcon.net/spug/