Get a job! Not with HR

Do you want to make tea at the BBC?
Career opportunities - the ones that never knock, The Clash

There has never been a more incompetent profession working against corporate Australia and the man and woman in the street, than human resource management.

This parasitic bureaucratic force leeches capital and innovation out of companies, while camouflaging itself in audits and mission statements. It is run by airport bookshop intellects spouting psychobabble.

Currently the unemployment and underemployment rate stands at 10 per cent. This is expected to rise as business confidence drops in the second and third quarters of the global economic correction.

The welfare of these Australians should not be dependent on the ineptitude of HR practitioners.

If the Australian HR industry was a candidate for a senior managerial position it would flunk out miserably. Here’s why.

Interview question to HR manager: “Tell us about the last time you advised management of a costed analysis, using the latest financial modeling of how HR could add value to the company.”

Silence. Finance? Costed analysis? Models?

Here the candidate HR Manager will fall back on qualitative mumbo jumbo about organisational culture. Wrong! They wanted a finance answer based on research and initiative. Thank you for wasting our time.

All of the services of HR should be outsourced to people who know what they’re doing. Deliver us from:

• Letting HR illiterates write and place job ads. Many are inaccurate, misleading, have information crevasses and lack clarity and brevity.
• Useless performance management audits that never see the light of day.
• Advertising positions at universities and the public service which will be filled by an inside candidate. The NT Government is infamous for this.
• Allowing recruitment agencies to “shotgun” your resume far and wide, to all manner of people, and then not follow it up.
• Running ridiculous team training workshops where people have to abseil down a cliff or build a flying fox from milk cartons.
• Allowing Seek and CareerOne to post job ads that are potentially criminally misleading, where the client is asked to provide details of bank accounts, etc.

How do I know this stuff?

I run a business called Republic Resumes. A couple of years ago, I was under-employed as I was building up the business. I don’t recognise the blinkered view that a man or woman can only have one career. I’m on my fourth. I put myself on the job market in both Melbourne and Adelaide.