Rayiner is absolutely 100% right about this. The real role of HR people is tax forms and health insurance, and little else.
Lots of the problems you mentioned sound like they were in part due to the company finding that difficult, and of course it should be noted that any process like this, about humans and done by humans, is going to have errors on occasion. The real trick is realizing and correcting them.
I've had people suggest that "willing to fire" is a bad sign, because we can be even better by just always hiring the right people! Which is a self-reinforcing style, because now you really can't admit you hired the wrong person.
[] The exception is when it does, they clearly hired someone for some bogus reason, but there will always be exceptions.
Well said. And their role definitely should not include administering bullshit voodoo science "psychometric evaluations" and making any decisions based on them.
Like everything, competent implementation and use are key, so I'm sure you have had experiences that give you reasons to doubt their efficacy. But every field suffers from some form of that in some way or another, and the degree of transparency into the process varies greatly.
Fair enough. BTW, I'm not the one who downvoted you, FWIW.
Honestly, as a PhD psychologist, they are the only useful (i.e. scientific) part of psychology.
For example, see Hunter and Schmidt (1998) http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%.... This (and if you've been around here a while, you've probably seen this) is a meta-analysis of the utility of particular selection procedures for jobs. That is psychometrics.
Unfortunately, much of the bullshit surrounding the particular psychometric tests used by HR departments has thoroughly debased a discipline that invented cross validation. Smith and Mosier, 1958 (Method 6, I believe).
cut/pasting from another comment of mine:
by saying that psychological research is itself useless, you're also throwing away things like A/B testing, UX testing (including Apple's much-vaunted usability stuff), research into grief management, team-building research, research into cognitive recovery therapy after acquired brain injury, work looking into ameliorating sexism and racism, perception research for HUDs in fighter aircraft (my honours research), some pain management research, research into dealing with PTSD, research into crowd control and management...
Someone with a PhD in the topic should be well aware of the breadth of the field that is 'psychology', and to say that the only useful thing in the field is psychometric testing just displays your myopia.
Half the stuff that HN talks about is psychology, from A/B testing to building staff relationships. It is far from 'useless', particularly given this audience.
It is ironic in the extreme that the people that shit on psychology do so because they see it as a 'pseudoscience' that 'doesn't observe things properly', yet so very few of them actually see psychology for what it is - instead just falling back on their own narrow stereotype of it.
If you use a linear regression rather than ANOVA, you will often be asked to change it to an ANOVA.
I am well aware of the breadth and depth that is psychology, and most of it is poorly conducted and irritatingly bad. I actually think it has a lot to do with applying a particular experimental model of science developed for non-reflexive systems to reflexive systems, with predictably hilarious results.
Please do not take out the rest of the commentators opinions on me, it upsets me also when people bash psychology from ignorance, but I come from a place of love when I bash it, as I do really adore the subject, but feel that much of it is so very, very awfully done.
A/B testing - psychology degrees teach pretty good experimental design, but you wouldn't know it to see a lot of published research. Additionally, rigorous experimental design owes a lot more to statistics than psychology.
UX Testing: This is definitely a good area, but again I think we don't control enough for the impact of the researcher(s) - see Rosenthal, 1969 for the problem, and note the complete lack of care regarding these effects in modern psychology.
Grief management? Seriously? I don't really think psychology has added much here, but would be delighted to read some good papers that prove me wrong.
Ameliorating sexism and racism? Good intentions, but given that I read a lot of this stuff I would have to say that they are perhaps the worst for statistical sins and errors (with the notable exception of Brian Nosek).
I know very little about perception research in HUD's, do you have some good papers?
I'm not entirely certain why you felt the need to correct me, when if you look at my comments in the overall thread it can be seen that I am pretty much on the same side as you.
It is possible that I am so sick of people who commit statistical sins for career advancement purposes (something I could never do) that I may be taking it out on the field.
Incidentally, what is psychology? I would be interested to hear your definition (as long as its not waffle like the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour, which merely begs far more questions).
Unfortunately, much of the bullshit surrounding the particular psychometric tests used by HR departments has thoroughly debased a discipline that invented cross validation.
Yeah, that's the rub, innit? The times I've worked for companies that did this stuff, and when I've seen results from them, I've seen nothing that leads me to believe in the utility of the tests. Unfortunately I can't recall the specific name-brand of the ones I've been exposed to or I'd criticize them specifically.
If an organization has a successful process of doing something and they bring somebody in who bucks their methods without regard for the establishment, that can be problematic. Sure folks can come in and disrupt organizations for the positive, but I'd say that's probably not the majority of organizational disruptions. Most of them are just obnoxious and unproductive.
Loose cannons can destroy more value than they create, even if they are brilliant in certain skills.
I work with a guy who pounds on his desk daily, curses at code, has OCD, walks about aimlessly, is anti-authority, depressed, and is a self-described autistic. In other words, he's the type to score 1%. However, if you have any advanced math problem he can solve it in minutes, whereas most people would either take days or never get the right answer. For me at least, I have no problem interacting with the guy and joke around with him often. But I do notice that with other people things will usually end up standoffish or awkward.
Perhaps, HR would be better served by using the personality profile to train the other workers in how to interact with a new hire and get the most out of them. The idea that a company should have a singular culture built of singular personality types, not only sounds like a flawed plan, but one that in the end is impossible to achieve.
But, underpinning your story is the blame/cover angle which I completely understand, and would consider an antipattern itself. If a few people screen someone and decide to take a bit of a chance on them from a personality perspective and they don't work out, let them go, learn from it, and move on.
HR people are not necessarily better in identifying these "signals". They might emphasize on "signals" that are not a big issue for technical people. Some technical people could be a little quirky. As long as it is not serious, it is not a big deal.
That's because they're not sharing wins from stellar candidates but they take blame for bad ones.
I wonder why blame shifting seems so central to american way of thinking. You'll give talent away to avoid it.
Because blame goes down, and reward goes up, so its a lot more important to make sure that the blame for wrong doesn't get to you than to make sure you get the credit for right, since the reward for right is an "attaboy" where those above you reap the substantive benefits, while the punishment for wrong remains substantive.
TL;DR Because capitalism, mostly.
This isn't really unique to capitalism - it's just politics and interpersonal competition.
This kind of thing happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in monarchist France (court of Louis XIV), it happened throughout all of human history.
It often seems like hiring stellar candidates involves circumventing HR policy. HR responds, instead of asking how they can help be part of the solution in the future, by incorporating new policy. Hiring stellar candidates, therefore, creates a situation where it makes it harder to hire stellar candidates in the future. There is no "win" in that game.
FWIW, the story the OP told took place in the UK.
But I expected it to be US, frankly. Didn't expect "personality tests" from UK.
And yet they often do. Consider that for a moment and wonder why it is so common, especially in technical companies.
What I have found over the years is that technical people hire people they think are great without regard to the HR "signals" and then one day they get screwed. Maybe they hire someone with anger management issues, maybe they hire someone whose antics expose the entire company to a crushing lawsuit. Or many they hire someone who, in short order, irritates all of the other employees such that there is a huge morale crash and exodus. Basically their hiring on technical merits and/or interview results in a very bad outcome. And then someone they know and respect says "Gee, an HR person would have spotted that right away, why didn't you listen to them?" or worse "Gee if my HR person had let that person through I would fire them on the spot."
You see in both cases something a bright technical person might be actually unable to see, could be the difference between a "good hire" and a "bad hire." And that is how HR people get into positions of power over hires and fires.
1) The hiring manager has someone else to fire (and blame) when a hire goes badly.
2) The hiring manager has some 'cover' over the things they don't readily see (like emotional issues).
Of course since the whole emotional/psychology thing is so opaque to some folks it is really hard to judge if the person they have providing that visibility is good or not. Sort of like someone who knows nothing about technology hiring a consultant, or someone who knows nothing about cars hiring an auto mechanic. One has to take things on faith a bit that the other person knows what they are doing and try to come up with ways to re-assure yourself that this is true.