HR: A Dirty Acronym

I have previously indicated my distaste for persons of the 'human resources' persuasion. From the reasonably safe vantage point of the employed and also with the discontented flavour of someone who has a cold, I shall further elaborate on that as (hopefully) my last tribute to the quest for employment.

Human resource experts, recruitment agents, and (my personal favourite spin) "intellectual capital specialists" are all terms used to describe one thing. People who make their livelihood from the exchange of other people's labour for money. Can you think of any other occupation that does that?

Yes, that's right. Slave traders. Slave traders also make their money selling the labour of other people. Only the slave traders are more industrious, because they actually have to go out and catch or otherwise buy their product. With the HR folk, all they have to do is wait for naive fish to wander into their nets.

Dramatic? Of course. But not untrue. Like Shylock, they believe that the living flesh of other human beings is valid consideration for a commercial contract. They are sharks. They are bottom feeders. They are not your friends, they are not ever on your side. Although it is your skin and bones that pays their way, it is the 'employer' that writes the cheques, therefore employee interests will always be ranked a distant third.

What causes me to slap my thigh and laugh a little is that they supposedly are the "screening process" for candidates. Unless they screen your DNA by lifting skin and hair samples from the interview room (I wouldn't put it past them, except that it seems a little labour-intensive for your average recruitment agent), there really is not a lot of screening that goes on. I've met with probably eight agents over the past month and the process is all the same. You show up on time, they make you wait. They apologise, fetch you a drink of water and get you to fill out a basic details form. Then you wait some more. Then they talk to you. You both shake hands, and part ways.

This is what they base their decision on. They don't call your referees. (Trust me, I asked.) A few written words and a maximum half hour discussion is the rigorous screening process that the employers are paying such good money for. Some may say that the employer is getting their human resource-related "expertise." Bullshit. I don't care how experienced you are with people, it's not like reading a book. You can't spend ten minutes to half an hour with me and be able to accurately predict my work-related competencies and behaviour. They don't just trade in human labour; they profit off of the lie that they are good at it.

I know this. Yet I sought their assistance in gaining employment anyway, because, as you would all be aware, it is a mega-shitty market at the moment. And because, if you want to apply for a specific job, chances are you have to go through a HR person anyway.

Which unfortunately, I did. it all looked good on the surface. The HR person pushed me through the interview process surprisingly quickly. They got me the rate that I requested, which is the highest rate I've ever earned (legally anyway). I am now employed in the IT section with a French mega-monster of a company working with a pretty fantastic pommy team. Sure, there's a certain percentage of cash that I'm earning that isn't making its way into my bank account, but I can deal with that. If that was all, that would be fine.

But that's not all kids.

First I get dicked around on starting date. I was told I was to start the next day, however, I didn't end up starting until a week later. OK, it wasn't necessarily the guy's fault the fact that I had a delayed start, however, the moral of the story is; don't say that you know something for a certainty when you know that you don't. I was tense for pretty much the entire week with the thinking I knew what was happening, and having the carpet pulled out from under me on that fact.

Also; the induction. The recruitment agency had their own special induction, which was, as all inductions tend to be, a complete wank. Accompanied by a handbook with Big Brother propaganda tones. Where the major problem lay wasn't in the fact that the agency had their own totalitarian induction, but rather that it was unpaid.

Sound illegal? I'm pretty sure it is.

But that's not the worst of the HR fucked-up-ness. Second day of the job, I have a nightmare of a cold that was threatening me on the first day. I go into work anyway and work a half day. Today I convince my workaholic head to stay home and convalesce for a day. Guess who gives me a hard time about it.

What the hell is up with that?!? I am a contractor, not a robot. If I'm sick, then I'm sick. The best thing to do in such a circumstance, when one is coldly informed by the HR leech that getting sick on the second / third day "isn't a good look" is to pleasantly, but formally and just a tiny bit more professionally, remind said leech that one valiantly went into work the previous day when one was actually sick and that one will return to work when one is physically capable. Leaving it unsaid that it wouldn't happen before that. Hopefully in his life before being a leech he cultivated enough intelligence to get that fact.

There is one extremely positive aspect regarding HR flesh-dealers that must not be overlooked: they are powerful motivation to further ones plans for freelancing work.