They nearly always perform the initial sorting of resumes. People in charge of departments or groups (who are usually the ones hiring) are often too busy to sort through 400 resumes.

Even at lower levels. I managed a team of 4 people at Yahoo, and whenever I was replacing someone, we'd send a spec to HR, negotiate a pay grade target to fit the department budget, and wait for the resumes, who'd first been sorted by external recruiters, then been further filtered by internal HR before they landed in my inbox.

This was true even when I managed hiring at a company of 50 people or so. At companies smaller than that, I've usually been the one to have a first look at resumes for my team.

That's an incredibly uninformed opinion you've got there Thomas!

HR tends to be the first line of defence between a job seeker and a hiring manager. The majority also conduct the phone interview and occasionally the first face to face interview.

Finally, who do you think hires other HR staff? So, yes. Human resource people are hiring managers. More so than most.

I would hesitate to call tom uninformed.

HR tends to be the first line of defence between a job seeker and a hiring manager

From my experience (longer than tptacek's) there are BFE (big freaking enterprises) that use HR to screen, but in every one of those, if an external applicant could find a hiring manager, HR reduced to a pro-forma deal.

Even at the executive hiring level, if HR is meaningfully involved, it is with a specialist hired to do nothing but that.

As a "first line of defence" they are the opposite of qualified. External candidates and internal hiring managers find ways around them if they are at all involved. Otherwise, the result is not filled with qualified folks.

I've never worked for a company in which HR had any real influence over selection, but then, I've mostly worked for startups.

We have HR. They don't screen.

I might suggest ratcheting back "incredibly uninformed".

I stand by my statement. I have nothing but respect for your obvious and substantial success but as you say yourself, you've mostly worked for startups. Whilst you're clearly more informed than most on all things tech & startups, in this one particular area, you're point is clearly ill-informed.

The vast majority of established organisations with 100+ staff have a HR department and in Europe, the HR department usually screens CV's and are regularly involved in phone screening and/or first stage interviews.