The Enemy in HR

IMHO this comes down to people being unable to make judgement calls any more. Every decision has potential legal consequences, so anyone making such a decision has to have clear criteria for making it that will stand up in court.<p>Companies don&#x27;t give referrals any more for the same reason - making any judgement about an ex-employee is potential grounds for legal action (the next employer can sue because they hired the person on the basis of your erroneously good referral, or the ex-employee can sue because of your bad referral). Most companies now refuse to do any more than confirm position and dates of employment.<p>So if HR does anything except screen by specific, pertinent qualifications then they could potentially be sued, especially for public sector jobs.<p>Which is why the &quot;back door&quot; of knowing the relevant manager and getting them to hire direct without going through the recruitment process is fine by everyone - no liability! The position was never advertised so it cannot be discriminatory or unfair.<p>Of course, for some public sector jobs (and large corporates) there is a policy mandate that all jobs must be advertised.

&quot;You’ll find the departments are predominantly staffed with women... They are hiring predominantly male candidates for positions whose duties they typically don’t understand. &quot;<p>&quot;Those ladies down in HR...&quot;<p>So the article makes some good points about HR filtering candidates based on questionable heuristics, but the gender of the people in HR being mentioned as somehow relevant sticks in my craw.<p>Further, the suggestion that there are secret policies in HR to hire people with degrees from good schools is BS.<p>These policies occur because of the need to justify individuals&#x2F;policies, etc to managers that lack technical expertise and also fail to utilize the expertise of their experts on who to hire.