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I recently read in a career book that interviewing with HR departments should be avoided any chance you get, with candidates gracefully asking if they can interview with a hiring manager instead of HR or alongside HR.
The reason given was because this book stated that HR departments only purpose of interviewing you is to look for reasons to eliminate your candidacy. Reasons to get you OUT. They will look for any little thing you might say that does not align with "keywords" in the job posting, and can have great influence over your candidacy.
However, it's always been my knowledge that having an interview with an HR department FIRST was standard fare. I've had them for most positions I've gotten interviews from. Ironically, I now realize all the job offers I've had in my career were in positions where I never interviewed with HR. Is it really true that one should try to avoid interviewing with HR? I feel it would be very tough to skip this step (and sound horribly rude on your part) if the company decided this was the course of action. Not only that, but one would say the HR person represents the company and hiring manager, so should be able to answer and interview the same way a hiring manager would.
In this day and age, I really can't imagine it being a good idea to refuse to meet with HR. In my company, as you noted, it is part of the process. People come in and meet with someone in HR for half an hour and then perhaps 3 or 4 other people in the company for about an hour each. You are really going to make people think that you are being difficult and unwilling to respect company policy right off the bat my refusing to meet with HR? In my experience anyway this seems like extremely bad advice.
Say there are 5 people that make the cut for intrviews. One of them refuses to meet with HR and the others do. I suspect that the thing most people would be talking about regarding candidate #1 is his or her refusa to meet with HR when everbody else seemed to manage it. Much lss discussion regarding his or her actual qualifications or the qualit of thr interview.
Now that I think about it, jobs and the internship I did ... the interview(S) were with the manager or supervisor of the position.
it has been on my mind lately, HR are full of snobby women usually.
In this day and age, I really can't imagine it being a good idea to refuse to meet with HR. In my company, as you noted, it is part of the process. People come in and meet with someone in HR for half an hour and then perhaps 3 or 4 other people in the company for about an hour each. You are really going to make people think that you are being difficult and unwilling to respect company policy right off the bat my refusing to meet with HR? In my experience anyway this seems like extremely bad advice.
Say there are 5 people that make the cut for intrviews. One of them refuses to meet with HR and the others do. I suspect that the thing most people would be talking about regarding candidate #1 is his or her refusa to meet with HR when everbody else seemed to manage it. Much lss discussion regarding his or her actual qualifications or the qualit of thr interview.
I agree you would probably blow your chances asking to interview with a hiring manager instead of HR, so the better question is How does one "survive" the HR interview when it's nothing more than a struggle to stay afloat with your hands tied behind your back.
I'm getting the consensus that interviewing with HR is generally a bad, or at least worrisome, thing. However refusing it is just as bad or worse. Quite the tricky situation. Never really looked at HR interviews like this before.
I had one interview where I interviewed with HR and got the job, the rest of my interviews were with whoever the manager or supervisor was, and I didn't always get those.
I wouldn't worry too much about an HR interview because if the company wants you to do it, NOT doing it is a much bigger risk and is much more likely to not get you the job, than doing it.
If they've got HR screening candidates, it's probably because they've got so many that the hiring manager doesn't want to talk to them all. So even if you found a way around HR, you would probably frustrate the manager by being the oddball. The exception to this might be if you have a contact in the company who is close to the manager and is willing to put in a good word for you.
If, on the other hand, yours is just another resume in the pile, you don't want to be "that guy" who made things difficult by feeling entitled to circumvent the process. Unless you have well-documented evidence of walking on water, that will probably get you removed from consideration.
Sounds like real bad advice. He says the job of HR is to keep people out while HR will tell you it is their job to find who to bring in. In either case, they are not going to deviate from their established practice because you want them to, so expect to be dropped from the process if you don't want to follow along.
In my experiences, the only HR interviews I've had have been phone screens to determine if I was good enough for them to send along to the hiring manager. The only face to face interviews I've had have been with hiring managers.
I don't think you can tell the company how YOU want things to be done. You're playing THEIR game and it is THEIR market these days.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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I wouldn't avoid HR, but, the best way to a job is often not through them. Informational interviews and gaining connections to those that make decisions is the way to go. If you connect with a decision maker and they are interested in you, HR will facilitate the interview. My last three positions I met or spoke with HR in the "first round", but connected with someone higher up to even get that opportunity. That isn't to say I personally reached out to those people, but a contact/reference of mine facilitated a connection in which I followed up on. There are good and poor ways to go about such things. Most senior people are constantly inundated with information interview requests, many do several a week, its part of being in senior management.
In general I've found that minimizing my contact with HR is a good thing. I can not stand their psychobabble and vodoo assessments.
HR are generally arogant incompetent bimbos who are unable to do anything more productive than benefits administration dumped into a department where they deal with any issues afftecting personnel. They've created this hiring system where by they use bigoted stereotypes and generalizations, faulty logic, and crude attempts at psychological profiling to select candidates and they mascarade it as a science which is rather painful to watch for people in real sciences.
In any case, because employers have the advantage in todays market they can subject you to anyting and you can either play along or they will eliminate you. I am fortunate enough to have a good job so I chose not to even bother with other companies and their dysfunctional hiring BS but I still cringe when I see it.
If you have a budy that can get you arround HR that is the best option otherwise if you don't follow their process HR in their profound logical abilities will label you as unable to follow company guidelines and toss your application.
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