I still remember a quote from a highly successful recruitment specialist from a seminar:
the HR should be last person you are dealing with in a recruitment process
In other words,
THEY ARE USELESS!!!
You rarely get great jobs by directly contacting the HR, always try to contact the operationals first. The HR ideally should be involved only when you sign the final contract.
Ok this is maybe a little bit exagerated... but read on.
At that time, I didn't fully understand this, "come on, it's their job to recruit people right?", until I experience this sh*t first hand through my internship at GE Healthcare Europe.
I already did a internship at GE a few years back so I had the email contact of a HR person. So I sent her a email with my résumé stating that I was looking for an internship in marketing. No reply. Days later, I resent an email asking maybe she is not in charge of the internships and she could just give me the right person' contact. Again no reply.
Sometime later, I found out through other means the "right" HR person's name and email, sent her my résumé and no reply. Days later, sent again, no reply.
I have the markeing diploma from the best business school in France so I said to myself, "ok, maybe they don't need interns..."
Then a month later, I needed to invite a marketing manager from GE to come to my school for a seminar. At the end of the seminar, he was taking applications for internship in marketing. I was the only one to be recruited.
Once inside GE, I asked around if they need interns, hell yeah, almost all the entry/junior level positions are filled by interns. And many departments have a hard time just looking for qualified interns. So I asked if the HR was any help, they all said "yeah, we asked them to communicate the offers to different schools and actively recruit people for us". So much for "actively recruiting"...
Then my internship ended two monthes ago, I was looking for a more "permanent" position at GE. And I tried to take an appointment with the HR for this matter, she was "too busy" and I needed to reschedule. And the day came, the appointment was over after 15 minutes. The whole time, the HR wasn't giving any information, she wasn't helping me to look through the internal offers at all. Fortunately I got a lot of information from other people before the appointment, I could ask the right questiosn to squeeze some information out of her.
Later I found out through another intern from the HR department that the HRs spend their days writing reports (concerning HR strategy, recruitment etc...) and organize career fairs at schools and stuff... Basically things that are good to put in the reports but totally useless.
Damn, I thought their job was actually to recruit the right people for the company instead of making it harder for them.
I also talked with lost of employees who've been at GE for a long time, basically the consensus is uninamous:
The HRs are useless !!! They can't help you at all !!!
"Fvck the HRs".
I can NOT generalize for the whole world, but at least in France it's true. In all the top business oriented schools, people go for marketing, finance, and management control etc... only the low life students who are too dumb to do any other fields would settle for HR. In the top ranked business schools (like mine for example), HR curriculum is not even offered.
HRs = Dumb paper pushers
The ONLY exception I witnessed was the marketing HR recruiting manager from l'Oréal France. That girl was sharp. Ok, after my interview, I asked her about her career path, she actually did marketing AND HR as a minor at school, that explains why she's far from as dumb as the real HR peopls.
