When you submit a CV to a company, does it go to HR first for the initial sifting and then to the recruiting engineer?

Do you think HR can be a barrier in the recruitment process? Do people wish the CV could go straight to the recruiting engineer?

Depends on the size of the company whether they have HR or not. Also HR would not for example know whether our engineering experience is good enough or not as they are not engineers but they may have been asked to check if, for example, candidates have a HNC and if they only have ONC then they can reject that application.

I do however think they can cause issues when they carry out this 'personality testing' because we may have all the relevant qualifications and experience but not make it through the personality test. However whatever the business sets as its requirements is what we have to get through in order to get the job.

Regards.

I have been to interviews where there was a separate HR interview. A technical interview would usually follow.

How do you well at HR interviews? Here it is more expression of character than your technical ability. What is the purpose of an HR interview?

When you work for a company it is not just about getting paid, as I am sure you know. HR ensure that relevant non technical aspects are covered and evaluated. The company is also telling the candidate what they have to offer etc. There are millions of companies and thus millions of different variations for setting people on and providing they comply with relevant employment laws they can adopt whicever process suits them. For interviewing it's the standard stuff, dress well, arrive early, be reasonably happy, confident and enthusiastic, don't criticise your last employer, if they ask for a negative about you think of one which you can then turn into a positive, answer questions honestly, do a bit of research on the company before the inteview and also ask good questions about the job and company rather than the salary etc. There is no magic formula else everyone would apply it and you would still be no better off.

Regards.

I went to a graduate assessment centre for Astrium and the whole hiring process was handed over to HR who made us do all these tests which bear no connection to the actual job. What was the point? Does HR think they are being clever?

I get fed up with this "X factor type recruitment" and people who focus too much on outward behavior rather than the abilities of the person.

All I can say was that this job was probably not that technical if they recruit in this manner.

For things like graduate recruitment, it is important that the candidates have the social, leadership and teamworking skills, or have the ability to build them. I was told a while ago at an assesment event 'we can teach you the technical stuff, but not how to get on with people', and I now agree with this.

HR are better placed to judge these skills.

For more senior Engineer positions, in my company we get all the CVs through for shortlisting.

People are always very quick to blame HR...

Simon

HR are just acting under instruction of the management.



Society goes through phases and crazes, and unfortunately, at the present moment in time these X factor type recruitment procedures are in fashion. Corporate bosses often make their decisions based on what their competitors are doing or from material published in HR magazines. As long as the bosses get the people that they want then they will be happy to continuing to use such recruitment procedures. When the employees underperform academically or technically then the bosses will probably blame the schools and universities for dumbing down their courses before bringing their recruitment procedure under scrutiny for rejecting applicants with high levels of technical skills in favour of clones of Tony Blair or Richard Branson.



If this is true then it is a very bad decision at such a stage in life. Universities teach academic subjects, not soft skills, which means that many graduates have never had the opportunity to properly develop skills in things like leadership or teamworking unless they have previously been involved in things like political activism.

People develop different skills at different rates and at different times in their lives. Whilst some 22 year olds already exhibit talents in leadership or diplomacy, others don't effectively fine hone these skills until they reach middle age. I'm personally doubtful whether these X factor type recruitment activities actually tell an employer anything useful as they generally very unrealistic of real world working conditions and true expectations of the employee.

A recruitment procedure for people fresh out of academic education that is heavily biased towards soft skills actually makes a mockery of initiatives to encourage youngsters to put more effort into studying academic and STEM type subjects. If soft skills and social skills matter so much at recruitment time then surely it would be a more logical decision that more time and effort is devoted to teaching them at school and university rather than trying to change the GCSE ICT course towards one based on hard computer science.

You might not be aware of this, but an increasing number of parents are choosing home education because they believe that school is too academic and fails to effectively teach children soft skills and social skills required for employment and life as an adult.



I find this quite distressing because effective career development involves training in both technical matters, and in business and interpersonal matters. A bank I used to work for offered staff training courses in customer service and telephone skills as well as technical matters about financial products. Therefore it is a complete nonsense that companies are unable to train people in soft skills.



I myself blame the management.

I agree management is responsible for everything, but HR is or should be part of management.
These sorts of processes will never go away because the volume of applicants typically outweighs the resources of recruiting companies to review everyone thoroughly. Better to learn how to deal with this stuff than fight it.
Remember David Brent from the office-"I throw away half the CVs because I don't want to employ unlucky people". Equally these processes will result in the rejection of good candidates and the acceptance of poor ones.

Interestingly enough, this is often a really mis-understood space of labor therefore i will be able to conceive to give a thought of what Human Resources individuals bring to a company. As in several alternative professions, this is often a career that features variety of specialties yet generalizations.Regardless of whether or not you're a personality's Resources Generalist or have a particular Specialty, the Human Resources field is concerning the management of individuals in organizations.What this suggests is that they supply an assortment of activities; policies and procedures; and other people management skills that relate to developing, utilizing, maintaining and retaining the suitable variety and ability of staff to accomplish the organization's objectives.

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