The Corporate Boondoggle ... or ... How HR is F-in Up Your Company

TL;DR
You are missing out on your candidates because your are allowing those with no understanding of how to identify skills to evaluate and make decisions on a skilled individual. This means you waste time interviewing those identified as a potential candidate due to their “time” and “keywords” relationship without any consideration to the quality of that time. How does that make sense? You need real skills, and identifiable understanding of the required skills. This is what you aren’t getting. It’s obvious in the repeat postings and time for a reevaluation and overhaul of the system you use.

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I am not sure how many people try to track events key to their industry, there are just so many things going on in life. But, I, have my regular routine of tracking events … at least to the degree possible. Every morning I run through various financial websites and news sites checking for stories that may be impactful to the economics behind a business. Of course, currently, we have wars, precious metals, inflation, fraud, datacenters, layoffs (often underreported) and AI. I probably missed more than a few since these are just a broad scope, but one other topic that I regularly check is the listings for positions within finance and accounting.
Sure, finance and accounting interests me, its my wheelhouse, but it is also a sign of the health of a company and the job market. Some of the first companies to layoff in rough times are in financial services or in the finance and accounting department, definitely in the FP&A (financial planning and analysis) focus since it is usually beyond the scope of reporting compliance and therefore trimmed down. This isn’t to say sales and programming (retail/logistics/technologies) hasn’t been hacked to bits, but I can’t watch every area. What I have seen, however, over the past 4-5 years of tracking position postings has been more than interesting, something I believe few upper management are even aware of …

The same companies post the same positions over and over again, every 6 - 18 mos. And these aren’t just any positions, these are the mid to upper mid skilled Directors and Managers and Analysts for Finance and FP&A. In the current market for finance professionals, it is unlikely its turnover. So… you have a couple of possible reasons, one is that they aren’t hiring and they are just spending their budget and attempting to justify their existence in the organization. Another possibility is that they, like nearly 85% of companies’ HR out there, hired DEI candidates that never had the qualifications in the first place and either have to replace them or hire a buffer to make up for the skillsets that they are not able to manage themselves.
—(I don’t care what you look like or believe, I care that you can do the job. Years ago when I worked for a major clothing retailer I got in trouble for hiring individuals who were great salespeople and fun workers because they weren’t ‘So and So’ collegiate-frat brand types. I just looked for great ability)--
The final possibility is similar to the second but the key factor is they hired someone that had the requisite amount of “time” and “keywords” of “experience” on their resumes and were probably very likeable, nonthreatening to the manager in terms of skills, and hired, only to find they too did not have the competency to complete the position.
—(I recently saw this in several companies, with “analysts” of 5-7 years “experience”. I call it the process trap since years in a company rarely means you actually develop anything. You maintain models and help with reporting, perhaps trying to implement very naive analysis every so often, but because no one else has the tech skills to do it … you keep your job. You even get pushed up the ranks if you are likeable and relatively competent, knowing their standard system for reporting. Yet you never actually learn any skillsets because that requires external avenues of education, something that is never considered or seriously undervalued. This is why, even with 5-7 years of “experience” the recruiters still have to ask if you can use a VLOOKUP function.)--
There really can’t be other reasons. Either the position is real or its not. If not, see above. If yes, and it is listed over and over, see above. The far-fetched reason is that the position wasn’t ever filled. However, if in the current marketplace, you can’t find someone to fill a finance roll, then you have no idea how to judge requisite skillsets and do not understand the competencies nor how to find them during questioning or on a resume. And this brings me to the ridiculous state of recruiting and HR that we see today, one that is quite literally creating a mess that will collapse companies from the inside if it is not addressed.
It is well known and discussed in strategy that parallel services will arise in a marketplace when someone can provide a competency more efficiently than a company can do for itself … hence outsourcing. What we have seen over the past decades, 30 years of witnessing for me, is the rise of firm that provide recruiting/hiring searches for companies. In a time when there was much less technology, and minimal internet usage, this could be understood; firms in smaller towns may have had trouble finding executives. But companies still managed. There were walk-ins, and people pounding the pavement carrying their resumes with them to hand over to personnel. Only personnel didn’t filter them, they went right to the department and someone within the department who was well versed in the subject matter went through the resumes. Some of the best times for the US economy were through the 80s and 90s … with none of the garbage that we see today.
Today with the number of internet platforms there should be no reason this couldn’t be done. Only the system changed. And one can discuss AI filtering resumes for keywords or AI writing resumes for candidates … but that isn’t it. The AI still only does what it is told. What changed was that the resumes are no longer looked at by anyone that understands the subject matter. A bottleneck, a gatekeeper was created in the form of HR and like most gatekeepers, was comprised of individuals who should’ve only been doing data entry, not selecting the most important analytical positions in a company when they, themselves, had never done anything analytical in their lives.
If you walked into your HR department today and asked around, there will not be a single one that could tell you the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet. Hell, if you asked them where you might go to find labor statutes for your state not one could tell you where to go … (each state has a dept of labor, easily found through the sect of state website for most) … and this would technically be THEIR job. HR is also the only department that doesnt seem to have to meet its own requirements … perhaps one will have a degree in HR or some other business degree. That at least says something since these are the only ones that ever display any real competency.
Take some time to check out your department … (some examples)


— degree Communications; experience barista
— degree Social Work; experience nanny
— degree English; experience retail personal shopper
— AA degree Business; experience cashier
—but I especially like the ones who have only done HR to HR to HR … and yet still have no idea how to identify poignant answers that identify real understanding of the skillsets required.


Now, this isn’t to say that the standard entry of personnel data cant be done, but HR requires understanding of labor statutes, severance, lawsuits for harassments, and numerous legal issues. If you were hiring for HR for your company, this is who you would hire? None of them would make their own list if they went by their standards for “time of experience”. Oh the irony. Is it any wonder that a parallel industry rose up for hiring, not only for the executives but for every middle level position on up?
Another issue that must be brought up is how could you possibly have your greatest skilled positions, often highly technical, judged and filtered by individuals that do not and couldn’t even begin to understand the skills? Again, just ask the basics … Income Statement and Balance Sheet.
—(I have sat through numerous sessions with these individuals asking their list of questions and finding that if the answers are not in the simplest format possible they do not know what to write down. If you pay attention to the interviews, you realize very quickly they are nothing more than secretaries attempting dictation, feverishly attempting to match keywords with time of “experience”, having no understanding of how to judge the answers to actually assess skills)--
This is why, someone from the department was the actual individual or individuals that went through resumes passed along from personnel. Is it any wonder the rise of the recruiting industry? But, what started with the executives has now spread throughout the levels from middle management and skilled positions all the way to the top. Of course, this came about because of another strategic principle, if there is excess profit to be gained, competitors will continue to enter the market. If I was evaluating this scenario, I would say you are overpaying the outsourced firms that only offer the recruiting/search services since you are still ending up with the same result .. a filtering of candidates through the same low competency HR department only now you are paying double even triple…
You are missing out on your candidates because your are allowing those with no understanding of how to identify skills to evaluate and make decisions on a skilled individual. This means you waste time interviewing those identified as a potential candidate due to their “time” and “keywords” relationship without any consideration to the quality of that time. How does that make sense? You need real skills, and identifiable understanding of the required skills. This is what you aren’t getting. It’s obvious in the repeat postings as I mentioned above.
—(another crazy real life occurrence: the other day I heard an HR rep mention that during an interview she asked the question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
The single dumbest, laziest, ridiculous question is still being asked after 30 years. This is your HR. By the way, if you ever had to do group projects, it was always the people who somehow ended up in HR that you NEVER wanted on your project because they were never going to contribute anything. )--


I don’t care if this hurts feelings. Business isn’t about feelings, its about being profitable so that you can stay in business. When feelings come in the way of being competitive, the feelings become secondary. Fact is, the entire system needs an overhaul, but there are some things to do now.


First, you need to evaluate your HR department and their tasks.


—Skillsets, knowledge basis, processes, actual responsibilities and delivery.
—Evaluate Cost-to-Benefit of delivery on responsibilities, treat it like marketing because you are marketing your company to potential candidates.
—What is done to attract potential recruits?
—What tools are used, platform, advertising, ease of application?
—What questions are asked? Ask your HR what might be considered a “good” answer


Second, determine what activities are already outsourced.


—Odds are good your payroll is primarily outsourced and all that your HR does is the data upload.
—Odds are good you outsource your benefits to the company selected and they handle the majority of the onboarding through a benefits admin or account manager.
—Odds are good you have to outsource your any legal to a legal council so any matters of severance or harassment are primarily handled externally, HR being the notetaker again.
—Odds are any analysis of headcount and compensation is actually passed onto finance because no one in HR can use a spreadsheet or formulas for anything but the most basic of data entry.
—Begin to ask yourself what exactly your HR department does.


Third, seek to find an outsourced HR firm that can handle HR activities externally.


—Price their services.
—Determine savings by gutting the HR department.
—Reconfigure the HR department back into a personnel department that primarily coordinates information and data (as they already do) only with fewer people.


Fourth, if you are using AI to filter resumes have a functional department expert and IT walk through the process and what is being evaluated.


—Get back to individuals that actually use and possess the skillsets evaluating the potential applicants.
—The evaluation will be more efficient, a better evaluation can take place, you will only interview those with real skills thus optimizing time usage, and with technology this can be done.


Your people are your most important commodity. But it is a competency outside teh core competencies of most corporations and definitely out side the competencies of your HR department. It is far too important to be left to a department that was forced into existence and filled with individuals with almost no competencies of their own.