HR People are not recruiters

I have not had a salaried position for almost two years now, and I will tell you; its not me, its you. The number one reason I haven’t taken, or even really been offered many full time positions is almost entirely due to HR being the person a company chooses to contact me. If I talk to a hiring manager and we hit it off, and the skillset and project are pretty compatible, its usually a no-brainer for both of us. But if HR calls me, well, lets get into it.

HR people are bonkers.

The amount of conversations I get into about what pronouns I enjoy, what I think about inclusion, what church I attend, what my hobbies are, what my sign is, how I feel about school shootings, or whatever, is completely ridiculous. Even if I wasn’t conservative myself, which apparently is akin to having leprosy to most HR people currently, why do I have to stroke your delicate ideologies or discuss unrelated nonsense to get through to an actual decision maker? I was raised that politics, sex, and religion were off the table topics at work. That worked just fine. I am here to work. I like working. I do not want to talk about womens’ rights or how much you hate Trump. I am not a lobbyist, I sit in a chair and write code. None of this stuff has anything to do with my work, or getting your projects finished. Buy me a beer after work if you want to talk about this stuff.

HR people seem to think its my obligation to do their jobs.

Look, I am sorry you are getting 100 applications. That does not somehow give you the right to ask me to do a 2 day project, for free, so you can “assess my skills”. I sent you a resume. I have demos and references. I can discuss a pet project I am working on. Look, if I talk to the manager, and we like each other, and you are ready to hire, or if you are willing to pay my hourly rate, I don’t mind doing a little project to prove to you that I am not some grifter. If you are calling 10 people in a day and asking for free work, before they really know if they even want the job, for the possibility of getting an interview, for a job that may not really exist or get filled, that is called theft of services. End of story.

HR people do not understand the requirements.

I get so many calls where the HR lady flat out says, “I don’t really know much about the job.” They tell me I can ask a technical person about that, but do I have any questions for them. What am I supposed to ask them? “Why are you calling me?” springs immediately to mind. Then I never get a call back, I imagine because they think my lack of questions for a person who can’t answer them confers a lack of interest on my part.

They assume I am lying to them.

This goes back to the free work thing. I get it, not everybody is what they say they are on paper. You can look at my demos, talk to my references, even do some background stuff to see if I went to the college I said I did. I am not taking my weekend away from my kid to prove to you, specifically, that I am legit. Anyone with any sense for the job could talk to me for 5 or 10 minutes and easily get a feel to see if I know what I am talking about. Not only is this a waste of everyones time, if you do decide, after making me jump through 50 hoops, that you want to hire me, you’ve put so much bad blood between us with your unrealistically thorough mistrust and inhumane processes, that it will probably be a no-go anyway.

I am not saying I hate HR people.

When you are ready to make an offer, have them call me to hash out the details and expectations. If the job requirement is unclear or outdated, for sure they should give me a call to make sure I would be interested. Once I am hired I would not hesitate to go to HR for clarification of benefits or cultural expectations. They are not qualified to vet or interview me for a position, in the vast majority of cases.