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ASK THE HEADHUNTER®
the insider's edge on job search & hiring™

Special Edition:
Does HR go too far when screening candidates?

Readers comment
on this controversial topic

In the January 14 issue of the Ask The Headhunter Newsletter I answered a question from a very frustrated reader who said she was "both surprised and appalled at companies who supposedly pride themselves on great customer service and then treat job applicants like simpletons… I think it's time someone addressed the invasion of privacy that applicants are subjected to."

She went on to point out "all the other types of corporate coercion that job seekers put up with, including credit checks, background checks, and other invasions of privacy, when no job offer has even been made."

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The response from subscribers was quick and pointed. So many of you had stories to tell and information to share that I decided to devote the next two issues of the Newsletter to your comments. What you will read constitutes people's opinions -- opinions I find compelling enough to print. I can't represent it as fact, but it has prodded me to do more research. I hope it stirs you to do the same, until we can all get a better handle on a disturbing phenomenon.

Please note that some of the most intriguing comments below come from readers who actually work in HR -- and their critique of the system will make you pause before you fill out your next job application. I thank them particularly for their candor.

Universal bad habits
A subscriber in France chimes in with comments that reveal HR's questionable practices aren't limited by geography or culture. He suggests that the intrusive HR behaviors we're discussing are pervasive, and that they're tied to accountability. The bigger the company, the bigger the HR bureaucracy -- and the greater the tendency to take cover under questionable practices.

The problem I have had with almost all the HR people I’ve met is what we call in France the "umbrella" tactics. It means “open an umbrella even if the weather is sunny and the sky perfectly blue in case a rain may come”. I have encountered the problem in big companies; never in small ones.

The purpose of acting "umbrella" is: if the applicant proves not to be good, I must be able to show that I am not guilty for having let him or her through.

That is why I prefer small companies to huge ones. A small company relies on people; a huge one relies on structures.

Michel G. Fenyö

I think what Monsieur Fenyö is hinting at is a structural movement within HR (or maybe in the corporate world as a whole) to avoid being held accountable for errors of judgment, as if we're never going to hire the wrong people. The good HR worker wants to be reasonably sure about a job candidate, and it's commendable that HR conducts reference checks on prospective hires. But checking people out is one thing. Invading their privacy (and possibly violating laws in the process) is something else entirely.

Yes, HR goes too far, because it needs to justify its existence
Readers sometimes assume that the HR community dislikes Ask The Headhunter because over the years I've used this forum to bluntly expose problematic HR practices. However, lots of HR folks subscribe to this newsletter and many HR executives have bought and use my book. I regularly hear from HR people who recognize the problems in their profession and tell me how they're working to change the system. One of them speaks out eloquently and candidly about the contradictions between HR's mission and HR's practices, and she points to a specific phenomenon that another reader will expand on later: the outsourcing of background checks on candidates.

Thank you for opening up this important and timely dialogue.

I am an HR professional who has chosen not to work internally because of the increasing intrusiveness, oppressiveness, and questionable premises of today's HR practices.

At some point the transaction costs to surveil, monitor, track, investigate, indoctrinate, categorize, rank, probe and scrutinize employees all the way to their bodily fluids may exceed the value created by these practices. The fact that so much of the HR function is being outsourced may be evidence of that the cost of HR has already exceeded its value to the firm.

A large part of the problem is the HR profession's struggle to find ways to justify its own existence. Over the past 30 years, HR has unquestionably jumped on one fad after another, claiming they can help protect the corporation or raise productivity through increasing control and monitoring of employees.

More light needs to be shed on the practices and rationality of the HR profession, including the costs versus the benefits of many HR practices.

For interesting insights into how the industry got to its current state, I recommend "War and Peace: The Evolution of Modern Personnel Administration in U.S. Industry" by Baron, Dobbin, and Jennings, published in the American Journal of Sociology, 92 (1986).

Another good read on the subject is Foucault's Discipline and Punish -- a history of discipline and control practices in prisons, schools, government and the workplace.

Jane Barwell, Ph.D.

Next: Pandora's Box and a savvy solution
We'll continue this Special Edition in the next issue, where another subscriber -- also an HR professional -- suggests that Pandora's Box has been opened. He reveals that in trying to cover themselves and their companies, HR departments may suddenly find themselves covering up illegitimate and possibly illegal practices. When a company outsources background checks and investigations of candidates, is HR doing its job, or ensuring plausible deniability while letting loose an investigative demon that systematically violates people's privacy and feeds the specter of identity theft?

Also in the next issue, I will print one savvy reader's method for avoiding trouble when the HR department goes too far in screening candidates. He has come up with a way to protect his privacy that also helps him "weed out the 'lookers' from the serious bidders".

I want to thank everyone who wrote in on this topic. Till next week, I wish you the best.

Nick Corcodilos
Ask The Headhunter®

 

  


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