University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Hiring and Human Resources

Kimberly Batton
Technical Communications
ENGL 2116-006
Robert Arnold

11/19/2014

Abstract

In my proposal, I am going to discuss the current problems of the hiring processes that Human Resources
Departments use to choose suitable candidates for a specific job.
Introduction:
Human Resources Departments claim that there is a lack of talent to be hired for jobs, while job seekers are
claiming that there are no job opportunities available. Through preliminary research, I have come to the
conclusion that these problems can be remedied by how the Human Resources Department conducts their
search for talent. Their basis on hiring talent seems to be solely based on how well the candidate can interview
rather than how well they can perform the job. But even choosing candidates for the interview seems to pass up
a considerable amount of well-fitted workers.
Objective:
Research the role of Human Resources Department
Determine Problems with HR Hiring Practices
Determine Possible Solutions
Consider Feasibility of Those Solutions
Solution:
There are three solutions that are being considered. The least feasible is the remove of the human resources
department. The two more practical solutions would be to either remove human resources from the role of
recruitment, or to innovate the process in which human resources recruits.
Resources:
My resources will contain websites with articles written by individuals who are a part of the HR profession.
Information about these sources will be on the last two pages of the proposal.
Outline
-

Roles of the human resources department

o Human resources roles

Safety

Benefits

Training

Employee Relations

Compliance

Recruitment

Problems with recruitment

o The Talent shortage myth
o but I have good grades

o The more the merrier?

Solutions and feasibility

o Dissolving Human Resources
o Limiting their role
o Innovating talent seeking process
o Communication

Conclusion

Feasibility Report

The topic of this discussion is Human Resources and their ability to effectively recruit talent for a company.
This topic was chosen due to personal encounters with Human Resources and their recruitment processes. The
problems with Human Resources when talking about recruitment, is their inability to locate qualified employees
due to lack of communication with the department hiring, their lack of technical knowledge of the company that
they are hiring for, and the process in which screening is done. There are three solutions available to this
problem: Dissolve Human Resources Department, Remove the Role of Recruitment from the Human Resources
Department, or change Human Resources recruiting process.

Roles of the Human Resources Department

Before discussing the role of Human Resources Departments in recruiting potential employees, it is important to
understand all duties that are being performed. There are six areas of responsibility in a Human Resources

Department: Safety, Employee Relations, Compensation and Benefits, Compliance, Training and Development,
and the area of focus, Recruitment.
Safety in the Workplace
The topic of workers safety was not always on the foreground of company policy. Since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution in the 1800's, the rate of worker deaths and accidents increased substantially, with most
victims being children until child labor was prohibited in 1938. The Mine Safety and Health Administrations
was developed in 1977, which reduced the average annual coal miners deaths from 450 in the late 1950's, to
only 19 in 2012. The Occupational Safety and Health administration was established in the 1970's. During that
time period, there were 38 work related deaths a day. That number has dropped more than 65 percent since
1970. Under this policy, employers are obligated to provide a safe work environment. In an effort to do so,
Human Resources Departments supply employees with workplace safety training, and track any injuries/deaths

that occur at the job site as mandated by the federal government. Human Resources Departments also play an

important role in workers compensation.

Compensations and Benefits
Human Resources Departments can play an active role in compensation for employees by setting up structures
for compensation, and evaluating the payroll practices of other companies as a means to offer more competitive
salaries. HR departments also handle group health coverage, and retirement funds.

Training and Development

Human Resources Departments provide new employees with orientation training to provide the basic skills
necessary to perform their jobs. They also provide leadership training and professional development.
Employee Relations
In order to better unify the employee/employee union with the employer, the Human Resources Department

tends to be the mediator between the two to ensure employee happiness by resolving workplace conflict usually
caused by concerns raised in employee contracts.
Compliance
It is mandatory for Human Resources Departments to follow laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and the
National Labor Relations Act. In doing so, the HR department can avoid unfair employment practices, and
unsafe working conditions which can greatly retard productivity.
Recruitment
Recruitment is self-explanatory in that when a company decides to recruit more employees, the HR departments
posts the positions where they can be readily accessed by potential employers. Applications are screened,
interviews are held, and the applicants that make it past this initial interview are refereed to company managers
for the final decision to be made.

Problems with Recruitment

On April 2, 2013 Nick Corcodilos, a Human Resources professional since 1979, published an article titled Ask
the Headhunter: The Talent Shortage Myth and Why HR Should Get Out of the Hiring Business. In this article,
an individual who has been unemployed was having a difficult time finding a new job due to the regulatory
screening process of Human Resources. As a job seeker with related work experience, he states:
Honestly, I just don't see the reason for silly online application forms or for screeners who don't

understand the work I do, when companies complain they cannot find the right talent. I really don't
get it.
Corcodilos responds to this statement by stating that Human Resources has no business in the process of
recruiting. The biggest reason being that Human Resources departments don't understand the work of those that
they are hiring. It is impossible to judge a persons candidacy for a position if there is no basic understanding of
that line of work. Kyle Smith, author of It's Time for Companies to Fire Their Human Resources Department,
stated his concern on Human Resources ability to hire qualified employees in this paragraph:
HR places a disturbingly high premium on what it calls communication skills and what you and I
call talking. A survey found that 83 percent of HR professionals cited training in communication
skills (they spent their college years in Watercooler 101?) as important to getting a job in the field,
while only two percent cited the importance of classes in finance. Actually knowing how the business

runs doesnt much register with HR. Using HR as talent spotters makes about as much sense as
asking the florist for help filling out the roster on your basketball team.
Due to this gap in knowledge, Corcodilos believes that Human Resources is only qualified to recruit other
Human Resources employees. Recruitment for other professions should be done by departmental managers in
order to find qualified employees.

The Talent Shortage Myth

Based upon statistics gathered from NewsHour and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2012, there
are 27 million unemployed (actively seeking work) people in the United States, and 12 million citizens are
underemployed. On the other hand, there are 3.7 million vacant jobs. This huge gap between the number of job
seekers and available jobs is known as The Great Talent Shortage due to Human Resources inability to find a
qualified workforce. The biggest reason for such a shortage is the disconnect between what Human
Resources and departmental managers view as qualifications. Since technological advances have allowed more
applications to be screened, being selected or denied an interview is completely dependent on keywords
selected by Human Resources that could consist of irrelevant qualifications. If Human Resources does not have
a good understanding of the business, proper talent can be pushed aside.
But I Have Good Grades
Currently Human Resources places high priority on individuals with better grades and those who can solve

brain teasers in a timely fashion during an interview. However, after being involved in over several thousand
interviews, Laszlo Bock (Vice President of People Operations at Google) discovered that there was no
relationship between academic/interview performance and their work performance. In a Business Insider article
titled Google HR Boss Explains Why GPA and Most Interviews are Useless, author Max Nisen interviews
Bock to discuss how Google is beginning to place less emphasis on GPA's and questionnaires to sniff out talent.
During the interview, Bock brought up one crucial point that is summarizes why it is a complicated task to spot

talent based off of grades and pointless interview questions:

Academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of

fine

trained, they're conditioned to succeed in that environment. While in school, people are trained to
give specific answers. It's much more interesting to solve problems where there isn't an obvious
answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.

Bock continues by stating that these primitive hiring methods were practiced because there were no other

methods available. It was also an easy way to sort applicants. But now that there is evidence suggesting that it is
not the best way to recruit, steps should be taken to find a hiring method that can determine the work capability
of potential employees.
The More the Merrier?
Another fault of Human Resources in the hiring process is their focus on gathering a large volume of applicants
for a position rather than the quality of applicants. This type of recruitment requires companies to spend large
sums of money on unnecessary advertisement on websites and in newspapers. Higher volumes of applicants can
also put more stress on the recruiters part, resulting in a larger margin of error when assessing applications. The
inefficiency of this recruitment is rarely scrutinized by the departments that they are hiring for due to lack of
communication.

Solutions and Feasibility

Based upon my research, there are three solutions to this problem, getting rid of Human Resources, removing
their role in talent selection, or improve the way in which they select talent.
Dissolving Human Resources
Option one seems to be the most radical, and the most unnecessary. Depending on the organization, Human
Resources Departments can be very useful in employee-employer relations, compensation, and training for
current and future employees. Removal of a Human Resources Department would cause a significant amount of
damage to the economy by drastically increasing the number of unemployed in the United States. It would also
put strain on organizations when dealing with subject matters beyond their qualifications such as compensation,
401k's and the implementations of training on a massive scale.

Limiting Their Role

Removing the role of recruitment from Human Resources seems like a very feasible alternative. All efforts that
have been placed on recruitment can be allocated elsewhere with little to no financial loss. Thus the process of
recruitment would rely on department managers who clearly understand what their criteria is for a talented
worker. The recruitment process would be slowed, but the quality of the applicants would dramatically increase.
Innovating Talent Seeking Process

If managers would like to allocate recruitment to Human Resources, there a several things that must be done.
Clear communication must be in place. Before and during the hiring process, Human Resources and the
manager of the hiring department should meet to discuss what they are looking for in a potential employee.
Managers and HR should also use this collaboration to define keywords and phrases that are specific to the
field. Human Resources should also remove themselves from their offices to recruit. This could greatly reduce
the money spent on advertisement as well as the volume of applicants. As a result, HR will have more time to

review applications while focusing on the criteria that have been set by the department manager. And finally, the
positions available should only be posted on company websites as well. If a company has a competitive edge,
the workers will come to that company.

Conclusion
Whether a company decides to remove Human Resources from the role of recruitment, or change the way they

recruit, increase in communication through meetings, letters, and memos between HR and its company should
always be in place. It is not just important for the process of hiring, but for employee relations and satisfaction.

Sources:
The following sources includes web based articles that contain information about the effectiveness of Human
Resources Departments and their faults in the hiring process from the perspective of job seekers, as well as
those who work in Human Resources. Based upon the outline in my proposal draft, the sources below will be
used initially to explain the roles of the Human Resources Department. Out of those roles, most of my focus
will be placed on their role in hiring new employees. I will then focus on the productivity, efficiency, and
effectiveness of the Human Resources Department in this role. Since my early research proved that the
effectiveness of the Human Resources Department in hiring employees is very low, I will try to come up with
an effective solution to this problem which just might include the removal of Human Resources Departments
based on an article in my sources. I will give a brief description of each source below:
Bibliography
"Is Your HR Department Friend or Foe? Depends on Who's Asking the Question Knowledge@Wharton." KnowledgeWharton Is Your HR Department Friend or Foe Depends on Whos
Asking the Question Comments. University of Pennsylvania, 10 Aug. 2005. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
<http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-your-hr-department-friend-or-foe-depends-on-whosasking-the-question/>.
This source share the viewpoint that Human Resources is seen as a type of necessary evil in the workforce. The
reason it is seen as an evil is because HR tends to wrap itself in to may rules and paperwork to become efficient.
HR also tends to lack the basic scholastic knowledge of the companies that they are working for. This article
focuses more on business goals rather than recruitment.
Corcodilos, Nick. "Ask the Headhunter: The Sign of Ignorance All Employers Hold against You." PBS.
PBS, 8 July 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-the-headhunterwhats-the-skill-all-employers-judge-you-on/>.
This source focuses on HR's inability to understand basic scholastic knowledge of the company they work for. A
yes or no to an individuals resume can be decided simply off of the HR clerks interpretation of what the
company is looking for and how they interpret what your have written on your resume.
Corcodilos, Nick. "Ask The Headhunter: The Talent Shortage Myth and Why HR Should Get Out of the
Hiring Business." PBS. PBS, 2 Apr. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/makingsense/ask-the-headhunter-the-talent/>.
This source specifically discusses HR's role in recruitment, and advocates the view point that HR should be
removed from the role of recruitment.
Corcodilos, Nick. "Ask the Headhunter: How Recruiting Technology Costs You a Job." PBS. PBS, 22
July 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-headhunter-recruitingtechnology-costs-job/>.
This source discuses the failure of modern recruitment which doesn't involve managers in the hiring process. It
briefly goes over how the recent talent shortage seems to be the result of HR recruiting on websites such as
Monster or SnagAJob.

Smith, Kyle. "It's Time For Companies To Fire Their Human Resource Departments." Forbes. Forbes
Magazine, 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2013/04/04/its-timefor-companies-to-fire-their-human-resource-departments/>.
Discusses petty practices amongst HR in the role of recruitment. It brought light upon a European study which
involved the dispersement of fake resumes of fake, and discovered a bias against pretty female candidates. It
also highlights HR's stagnant bureaucracy, and their lack of the basic scholastic knowledge of the businesses
that they work for.
Nisen, Max. "Google HR Boss Explains Why GPA And Most Interviews Are Useless." Business Insider.
Business Insider, Inc, 19 June 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.businessinsider.com/how-googlehires-people-2013-6>.

Discusses how HR recruitment is completely useless. Interview questionnaires that are set up to test a
candidates ablity to do the job had absolutely no relation to how well the candidate could perform their job.
Mayhew, Ruth. "Six Main Functions of a Human Resource Department." Small Business. N.p., n.d. Web.
16 Oct. 2014. <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/six-main-functions-human-resource-department60693.html>.
Discusses all of the roles of Human Resources departments.
Claywell, Charlie. "History of Workplace Safety in the United States." HubPages. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct.
2014. <http://charlieclaywell.hubpages.com/hub/History-of-workplace-safety-in-the-United-States>.
Discusses the history of workplace safety in the United States starting from the era of industrial revolution.