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He got 1%, we can't hire him

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Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#181

Post by tetha »

einhverfr wrote: post #130
Xylakant wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all departments in a company, HR does the tasks that they're assigned to do. It's a task, not a mission. There's scope creep and mission creep as with every task we're used to. If they do stuff that they're not supposed to do and make decisions that they're not supposed to make, it's the team and the person handling the team that's broken and time to reevaluate and adjust what value the team is supposed to br…

What, specifically is that task?

Our recruiters learn about the field they are recruiting in and search and evaluate potential candidates. Our HR admins manage and monitor sickness days, vacation days, contract renewals, contract terminations and so on. The HR managers, well, manage the rest of the HR.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#182

Post by rwallace »

antirez wrote: post #14

Improving a company 101: * Get rid of HR people. * Profit.

On the contrary, it's not the personnel department in this case that needed firing, it's the senior management. The personnel department performs a necessary function in dealing with the legal nightmares that come with hiring people. They must not, however, be given authority over who to hire and fire. Senior management, in giving the personnel department such authority, botched their own job.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#183

Post by Deestan »

LukeB_UK wrote: post #92

On the topic of technical tests, the company I work for has a good approach. They'll set the technical test for you to do at home (the same one for everyone), then you submit it and they review it. Based on that, you have a phone interview in which you have to talk through what you did and why you did it, being asked questions about certain bits and your choices. They also talk through some other bits to try and gaug…

That sounds like a sane test. If someone does blatantly cheat, it will be immediately obvious during the interview afterwards.

At my company, we ask people to submit some choice prior work if possible. Then we look at that, and try to have a conversation about the tech. The bonus is that it respects the candidates time, and it is easier to get them talking when it's their own projects. The downside is that very few candidates have recent prior work publicly available.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#184

Post by kefka »

James_Duval wrote: post #34
cperciva wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More generally, there's nothing worse than a social scientist who has illusions about being a scientist.

I was going to ask, somewhat facetiously, whether Asimov wrote "social science fiction" rather than science fiction. Fortunately, I googled the phrase before embarrassing myself. Turns out he all-but-invented the phrase to describe his own work. I suppose he had no such illusions.

Yeah.. There was that little Foundations trilogy that dealt specifically with psychohistorical studies.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#185

Post by Xylakant »

einhverfr wrote: post #179
Xylakant wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The task for an HR person? The scope really depends on your organisations needs and on the quality and qualifications of your HR person. In general: Handle or at least support all tasks that are associated with employees and other people in your company. The scope can be as narrow as "do background checks on hires, do the math on their desired pay and tell me how much each one would cost and if there's any red flags"…

Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better? Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers?

> Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better?

No. Mission creep happens on broad and narrow roles the same. The better defined the role, the better. Constant reevaluation and adaption to changed realities is a must.

> Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers?

Up to a certain degree yes, but there's the question how and where to allocate common functions if you have any. Depends on your organisation. That doesn't make the "HR department" disappear though, it just changes its name to "administrative assistants". It certainly makes things harder when people try to reach the HR department because that's what they're used to.

All in all: If that fits your organisation, sure. Just make sure that the role is defined and someone is responsible and actually takes up the work.

edit: see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289282 for a point where a more centralised HR made a positive impact. An assistant to the team manager might easily have missed the broad picture because of a more narrow view, focused on the teams turnover rate.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#186

Post by jaredsohn »

robinson-wall wrote: post #58
rjknight wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really valid, but it's not uncommon either. It's something that would sound unremarkable in speech but looks quite bad when written down.

It's perfectly valid. "X and I" is only valid if the sentence makes sense if you only used "I". This article makes one valid use of "me and X": > in an effort to score extra points with me and Carl. If you changed that to "Carl and I" then took out Carl it would be "to score extra points with I", which is disturbing and wrong.

Shouldn't it be "Carl and me"? I thought there were two rules for these phrases: subject vs. predicate (as illustrated in the parent post) and that you should put yourself last.

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#187

Post by einhverfr »

Xylakant wrote: post #148
einhverfr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the CEO have time to analyze optimal organization designs? Optimal for what? I do think the CEO or someone similar needs to figure out what you want from the organization and design it. HR may have input but it is just input. HR can do the market calibration research. That's a good role for them. Initial fit? That should be the team or team manager. Background checks? Either HR or an administrative assistant s…

Short question: Do you have employees? We do have a handful and the amount of work associated with them [1] is astounding. On average it used to cost me 20% of my time until we hired someone for administrative and HR work. Now, we're a small company and have no need for a full HR position, but that role is taken by a person and I can quite well tell that the more employees we hire, the more we'll move to a dedicated…

That's a good reason to have an administrative assistant, right? In fact there;s no reason why departmental administrative assistants can't take on HR roles, is there?

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#189

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #118
exDM69 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only once have I had a job where I was interviewed by a HR person. The whole interview made me feel uneasy, but I took the job anyway. I should have trusted my instincts and rejected the job, on the grounds that they put HR people to interview engineers with silly questions. The job, and the working environment in particular, was horrible and I didn't stay after my probation period. On the other hand, I was put on a…

There was an article posted about someone that worked for a large corporation and they forgot about him but continued to pay him for years. At the time I thought it was a hoax, after your story I'm not so sure. https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6087935

[deleted]

Re: He got 1%, we can't hire him

#190

Post by Xylakant »

einhverfr wrote: post #187
Xylakant wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short question: Do you have employees? We do have a handful and the amount of work associated with them [1] is astounding. On average it used to cost me 20% of my time until we hired someone for administrative and HR work. Now, we're a small company and have no need for a full HR position, but that role is taken by a person and I can quite well tell that the more employees we hire, the more we'll move to a dedicated…

That's a good reason to have an administrative assistant, right? In fact there;s no reason why departmental administrative assistants can't take on HR roles, is there?

Sure, if that fits you. That still doesn't make "HR" disappear - they're just labeled differently and can't specialise. So as long as you can't fill a full HR position that's certainly a measure, but if you can, why not fill it with somebody who can and wants to fill that role as good as possible?
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