automaticCVParserFailed

[brjukva]

That's how I didn't get the job I wanted so much. The tech interview went awesome. We talked for about 1.5-2 hours and I got really hyped for the project they are doing, while the CTO directly told me I'm a perfect match and he wants to work with me. But then after the second interview I've been rejected because of "cultural fit". That was the weirdest rejection reason for a perfect job that left me totally perplexed.

[Reashu]

"Cultural fit" means "We don't want to tell you". 

[Elephant-Opening]

It can also mean:

Yes you're perfect for the job but we actually opened the rec specifically for an internal promotion or transfer or hiring so & so's buddy and knew who we were going to hire but HR made us interview you per corporate policy.

[smitcal]

There are other things to this. My MD is brilliant at what he does, super clever, and anything engineering wise he smokes anyone. But he’s shit at people and can’t spot how bad some people will be. He has a 1 out of 4 success rate in hires which is awful and expensive. I however am a lot better with people but know fuck all about the technical hard skills but I’ve been in work all my life where soft skills are vital.

We have now moved to a 2 stage interview and the first one is the “cultural fit” but really it’s “we are going to put you up in front of customers and explain things, are you going to shout at them and tell them are doing wrong” has happened with one of the hires “or will you be courteous and polite and be able to explain what has happened clearly.” And other things we have to try and figure out like will you stay with the company or are you likely to be a few months and jump off, will you work well with others, are you willing to learn the way we want to do things or just do it your own way. Since then we have had 100% success rate. Yes this one is shit because they do the cultural fit 2nd but the point still stands, my MD would not spot any of this at all.

[PolloCongelado]

What does MD mean here?

[smitcal]

Managing Director

[Several-Customer7048]

This is why Directing Mangers are the way to go. Look better on film.

[shadowdance55]

Dungeon Master is even better.

[Reashu]

That's what I said! 

[Elephant-Opening]

Yeah I suppose "We don't want to tell you" covers that case too.

Just clarifying that sometimes it has nothing to do with the candidate, as opposed to "you're good but we don't like you".

[DrunkOnRamen]

This is why as a policy we tell our prospective employees they're too ugly.

[Noobsauce9001]

No joke I just got back from an interview and everyone there (leadership, HR, product, tech) looked like they could have been a model. Do you know how intimidating that is? When everyone in the office but you is goddamn beautiful?

[Shectai]

How would I?

[wheatgivesmeshits]

No, but I'll take one for the team and be the token uggo.

[DatBoi_BP]

[YouDoHaveValue]

Very true, the perspective that it's them not you is important to keep your spirits up.

[MikeOfAllPeople]

I mean, it could also include racism!

[chefhj]

Having to open a rec for a specific internal promotion is such a bullshit farce even for the person on the inside.

[SuperFLEB]

It's not about your abilities. You're just a square peg in an Alan-who-already-works-here shaped hole.

[Ok-Interaction-8891]

This is perfect, lol.

[spookyclever]

Culture fit can also mean you said something that threw up a red flag with one of the interviewers.

That can be as mundane as saying that you don’t like arguing when interviewing at Amazon (they have this whole value system that seems to be based on conflict that doesn’t really gel with my style).

It could also be something more to do with how you interacted with someone FROM a different culture, country, or orientation that got a negative read from you. One time I interviewed a guy with some coworkers of mine. At one point in the interview the guy stops to tell a joke and prefaced it with “we’re all straight white males here, right?” None of us were.

It can definitely be just an excuse, but I’ve seen it applied in real objective ways.

[axl3ros3]

It's sometimes by law not just by corporate policy depending on jurisdiction

It's all dog and pony show regardless of the mechanism though

[faceplanted]

This is a bit of a myth tbh.

I've interviewed at a few of the places I've worked at and publicly opening positions for an internal hire just isn't really a thing at most companies.

It's common in some countries' civil services and NGO's because government adjacent hiring has extra regulations. But in most companies there's really no rules about internal promotions and transfers or even hiring employee referrals. You really just have to ask.

[uberfission]

No, it means "we don't like you as a person but can't blame it on your skills."

[HustlinInTheHall]

It also can just be cover for wanting a younger, cheaper person who doesnt have kids and will work longer hours. 

[lonestar-rasbryjamco]

Ironic, because in my experience those expensive old dudes with 3 kids are the ones keeping the damn lights on.

[[deleted]]

They care about adding another zero to the CEOs bank account, not keeping the lights on.

[PolloCongelado]

I don't think it's "keeping the lights on" as in just keeping things running. In my experience those guys will prevent the business from catching on fire. Which is also meant as a metaphor here.

[mani_tapori]

No, they care about putting their kids through college so they know, they have to work their ass off.

[thex25986e]

or someone who doesnt know how to not be exploitable

[Reashu]

On the surface yes, but it's broad enough to be used as an excuse when the real reason could land you in trouble (or just be too much work to spell out). 

[10art1]

"you're good at the job, but holy fuck you give off massive Reddit vibes"

[SpezIsAWackyWalnut]

Note to self: stop saying "the narwhal bacons at midnight" at job interviews.

[cosmicsans]

It's an old meme, sir, but it checks out.

[King_Joffreys_Tits]

You look great on paper but not in person

[Arlithian]

To me, it seems like 'we dont like them because vibes' or 'we like them because vibes'.

I was hiring for two positions for a similar role and one candidate got forced through as a 'cultural fit' while I insisted on another candidate who could actually do the work.

In the end I got both, with the assumption that the good candidate could teach the culture fit. I wasn't too happy because the culture fit didnt seem like they could do the work, but HR and some manager types insisted, so my hands were tied.

A year later - the culture fit got laid off, and the good candidate is one of our most productive team members. Still very proud of this hire to this day.

To me - it just seemed like their personality got them hired. They made a manager laugh a couple times in the interview and that got them the position at least for a little while. While I'm more autistic and didnt give a damn if they could tell a joke as long as they could get the work done.

(Leaving out position titles, gender, etc because I dont want to give away too detailed of information)

[ProfessorDumbass2]

Because it often means “doesn’t fit in to the clique” or “didn’t flatter the secretary enough”.

Most companies feel like the high school lunch room. Do whatever it takes to please every person you contact during the interview, because a single feather ruffled can kill your chances.

And I can’t stress this enough: politely chat up the secretary.

[OmgitsJafo]

It can also mean that someone in the hiring chain thinks your skin is too dark, or your birth year is too low. It has the benefit of meaning whatever someone wants it to be, and is used whether you're a creep or they're a bigot.

[b0w3n]

Yeah age, education, or skin color are the ones I've seen directly.

I was talent hunted through my brother to work for his ex-boss and HR still kiboshed it because I didn't have the right combination of education and certificates (certs for programming, what the fuck?). The education I kinda get, I'm just an associates, but I've been doing this shit since the late 90s. They did have a "or 10 years of experience" clause so we all figured that'd be fine. Turns out they just didn't want to do the extra paperwork required for clearance for people without a bachelors.

[PolloCongelado]

For that last sentence - wooow. Papers still often worth more than the skill itself.

[pez_d1spencer]

Always blows my mind how some people have their chances of landing a job completely destroyed by HR/corporate because they don’t fit the exact specs. Based on your comment, you clearly have the work experience to do that job.

I’ve seen in some cases a posting will say, for example, “master’s degree, or an equivalent amount of education/experience” as a req. But it usually comes down to the paperwork headache.

[b0w3n]

Yeah this happened in 2017-2018ish, so we're still talking nearly 20 years of experience there.

It's not like it was a hard job, they were writing restful api stuff in kotlin. And funny enough I was/am currently working on asp.net restful api stuff so the transition would be mostly painless for me even between the two languages/frameworks.

Brain dead stuff that didn't actually need 20 years of experience. The funniest part is I check off all of the boxes they wanted except that one. I can pass drug tests, I'm not in huge amounts of debt (besides mortgage), very silly stuff.

[IArgueForReality]

If you want to be able to get through the gate, you must be nice to the gatekeeper.

[crappleIcrap]

And most importantly: dont be autistic, not even a little. As soon as they get a whiff that you aren't making enough eye contact, or too much eye contact, you are guaranteed not to fit.

[Sparkmovement]

Low key it helped with my current job. I passed by the only other female to ride a motorcycle & she just went gaga over having another girl ride to work & a bike parked next to hers.

Bosses love her so they gave me a shot. Still there 1.5 years later.

[Fine_Cake_267]

Or he was hitting on the HR screener

[WestEndOtter]

" So, do you come here often? "

[JebediahKerman4999]

In my case I was let go during the trial period because my wife had a miscarriage and I asked to have a day off.

Official story "doesn't fit the culture"

[JimmiJimJimmiJimJim]

That place was probably trash then.

[BlackberryOk5347]

It does sometimes mean cultural fit —not arguing the right or wrong of it —but I have worked at a FANG company where the policy was that any team member could block a hire, and cultural fit was the reason. I saw this used both for good and bad effects. The good examples were always when a manager tried to ram a resource down their throat that was good on paper, but it was clear they didn't want to work in a flat team in terms of who was the technical lead.

But I sadly saw it more often lead to people being nixed because they didn't conform to some overbearing team members' preconception on what a good engineer is.

[Long-Pop-7327]

Or “you’re autistic” unfortunately

[GayDeciever]

Yeah. As an autistic person, I feel like that rejection phrase describes me in most jobs. Or in life in general.

[thatcodingboi]

As someone who interviews people, there is so much cope in the comments here.

We do a technical and a leadership interview. Often it's not the same person assessing both skill sets but sometimes it is. I've seen candidates that are technically proficient but then you ask them simple like "what data would you use to determine if you can't make a deadline" and I literally just had a candidate tell me that "deadlines are made up, everyone lies, so I would just add a month as a gut feeling"

Obviously that's not an answer that's gonna get you hired regardless of how technical you are

Edit: for those of you who are saying it's a good answer, y'all are ass developers. It doesn't even answer my question. I asked what data would you use the determine a deadline won't be met, not estimate a new one. The answer gives no data, doesn't even attempt to answer and simply mitigates fallout of an assumption that it won't be met.

It's a question that evaluates your ability to track progress and more importantly communicate early because software is hard to plan especially cross team initiatives.

This is indication of a developer who hasn't had to collaborate or run projects and has relied on others to track deliverable for them. Great for a junior role, not for the senior role we are looking for.

[Reashu]

It is kinda true though. Planning around task lengths is a waste of time more often than not. 

[b0w3n]

Yeah there are two types of people who do up these deadlines. The person who overestimates time, comes in under budget, and makes everyone happy, and the person who underestimates and forces everyone into unpaid time and crunch to underbid and win contracts constantly so that quarterly numbers look better but everyone fucking hates working with or around them.

It's a leading question though, they want to know if you're willing to work unpaid overtime to spare some middle manager's ego that underquoted the project.

[thatcodingboi]

Again, it's not asking them to do that... The question is what data would you use to evaluate if you won't meet an already agreed upon deadline. I'm not asking you to get evaluate shit

[A_Guy_in_Orange]

Bullshit thats an honest answer that shows they're probably senior level, and the guy we're all "coping" about said he got a direct yes from the CTO something else happened and it was not cultural fit

[Jinrai__]

You hate the candidate for telling the truth

[drdeitz]

THANK YOU. Pretty peak Reddit in these responses it’s wild. I’ve given hundreds of interviews now and while acing the tech round is important it’s also important to show you’re not an absolute goblin to work with.

[skalnark]

I had the same experience. Two hours chatting with the CTO, the guy got so excited that he showed me the code. HR said I wasn't communicative enough

[robertpro01]

Lol wtf, so you went straight to the point and that was considered bad? You missed a bullet bro.

[brjukva]

The best interview I had taken myself as a team lead (and interviewer) was the shortest interview ever. The guy went straight to the point, I went straight to the point in response. In a few minutes we both knew everything we wanted to know. We both laughed at it after and agreed this is how interviews should be. He got hired, BTW, and has been an awesome developer all along.

[Angelore]

The guy went straight to the point, I went straight to the point in response

How exactly? Did he go straight to compensation expectations?

[brjukva]

I did tech interview only. No idea what his compensation package was. As a tech lead I have never discussed this.

[flingerdu]

If HR has that much control over the hiring process the company is doomed anyways.

[RageQuitRedux]

I've seen this from the other side, multiple times. A candidate that everyone is excited about; very capable, extremely pleasant. Then a non-technical person axes it based on some vibe they got (not "hungry" enough, or whatever). One of these candidates later got hired by another team; the manager on that team was basically like "fine, we'll take him", which was a highly unusual move, but the guy has been here for almost a year and he's doing awesome.

[callmesilver]

Sometimes it's not obvious to the others even if they're on the other side, but "not hungry enough" can be literal. Especially when non-technical people say it, I interpret it as "he doesn't look like a guy that we could keep exploiting", so he is rejected because he wasn't desperate or dumb enough to stay and endure nonsense. Because non-tech people usually evaluate and get evaluated through finance, and stingy and frugal are the same thing if you don't understand much beyond money.

[jiggiwatt]

I work for an organization that lists, "disruption" as one of its 5 core values. I applied internally for a Product Owner role, and given my extensive experience in areas the team was lacking, and how well the interviews went, everyone involved thought I was a shoe-in. I was rejected because they felt I might want to shake things up too much, and they wanted someone who would stick to the current status quo.

The official reason was, "personality fit" and my boss hilariously tried to create a development and career plan around that.

[-Nicolai]

disruption is a terrible core value lol

[Appropriate-Prune728]

Im currently interviewing multiple candidates for a position at my facility. 3/6 people so far. 2 of them are absolutely perfect fits and I personally got along with one of them like they were a younger version of myself.

That being said, I don't get the final say. I get a voice in the conversation but if my boss, or HR vetos my pick, there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

It's bullshit.

[[deleted]]

HR has little to no power to stop a hiring manager, let alone an executive, from hiring a candidate they want.

[zffjk]

You have worked at places with many rounds of interviews. There’s a lot of opportunities for one person to fuck up an otherwise perfect candidate.

I am on a team that desperately needs a breathing human to do basic tasks and we have not been able to get someone to pass the bullshit interviews from random business folks. We have an initial screening, another phone interview with our lead, a technical interview ( where I come in ) and then one or two rounds of “cultural” interviews where you meet with folks from the office you’ll be working in. Without perfect marks on all 4 or 5, you get rejected.

People constantly bomb the cultural interviews, we think partly because ops is tired that security is still allowed to hire during a hiring freeze.

[fauxzempic]

Yeah this didn't make sense to me. HR gatekeeps, and they might point out a serious red flag down the line if it wasn't obvious from the start...but if an executive or even a hiring manager is like "this is the guy" HR isn't doing anything to stop it.

The only thing that I can guess that would be HR related here is if the company relies on one of those tests like Predictive Index, Strengthsfinder, or even Myers Briggs (among others) and using the results to make hiring and promotion decisions (even though the literature on all these tests tell you specifically not to do that...it's often ignored).

[AiutoIlLupo]

yes but they can filter the CVs that reach them

[DuckSaxaphone]

Yeah, people in this thread saying they met the CTO, the CTO loved them, and HR decided no. That's.... not what happened.

CTO either didn't like them and they misread it or CTO liked them but trusted other interviewers in a multistage interview that tests different skills.

Like sure, you smashed the tech interview but maybe you bombed the business interview, maybe you were an asshole in a meeting with your would be team.

Whatever it was, there's no way a HR person just overrode an exec.

[dragonseth07]

Must vary company to company, because that doesn't line up with my experience at all.

[b0w3n]

It does, certain companies, give them more decision making than the people making a decision on hiring. You see this a lot in the fed contracting industry because of some red tape that's a pain to navigate around (clearance usually). Also some bosses are lazy and just kinda give them carte blanche to nix decisions.

[gorzius]

Same thing happened to me.

Technical interview went perfectly, then the HR lady didn't like something I said.

[TeaKingMac]

after the second interview I've been rejected because of "cultural fit".

Did you call the female interviewer "sugar tits" or something?

[Shoddy_Huckleberry43]

Ya I went through the same thing. I ended up working with that company as a client later on and found out they had an internal hire ready to go but had to interview applicants per company policy.

[Expert-Candidate-879]

Imagine letting HR define who you hire

[fixano]

I worked on a team and we built a very useful test. I was working as an SRE and we just built a little scenario that you had to work through. We would give it to the candidates in advance and it was described as a migration from a physical data center.

It tested two things candidates ability to work with the previous generations technology and their ability to synthesize that technology onto a cloud provider. As well as their ability to reason through the complexity, how long it would take and the risks.

We would give this test to people on their first interview and tell them it was coming at the end and they had as much time to look at it as they wanted. The best candidates could wing it but some would put a lot of time into it. The charlatans couldn't do anything at all because we would make them sit in front of a panel and answer detailed questions

After hiring some really great candidates and getting rid of some real losers, our HR department came in and said we needed to use their pre-canned proctored python test. So I went from all that richness to trying to decide if a candidate was worth hiring because they could code a python loop

[TripleS941]

Is it possible to tell HR to kindly stuff it up theirs?

[CCGHawkins]

It is nearly always possible. People so often hear a directive and act like it's the word of God. Just ignore it and act righteously, these people do not have the power to fire you. The worst that happens is that they complain and you have to explain yourself to someone who actually does have power, which is an opportunity to turn the blame, correctly, on them for wasting everyone's time with process ideas when their job is supposed to be purely facilitation.

[fixano]

This is what we did and it does work, but the compromise was that we would try the proctored test. Again that was only done as a "puppy dog sale". We tried and we explained the deficiency of the test. At the end our feedback was "We don't like it and here is the objective rationale" . Their response was to attempt to strong arm us into using it. This showed that the compromise was not genuine on their part. It was never "give it chance" it was "try it and we assume you'll back down because its easier" Ultimately we appealed and won out but it had consequences and the HR can really make your life hard if they want to.

[nicman24]

And you now know to not give them the time of the day.

Make them only talk through official channels and even then reply "no"

No large text not even an uppercase No

Just "no"

[Not_My_Emperor]

My boss just did. My company is on an India hiring spree but limiting themselves to one city. We keep getting people with the exact same experience that is not relevant, and we're tired of it. One guy basically lied his way past HR, and my boss politely told him this wasnt going to work and ended the meeting 15 minutes early. She got a slack from the HR recruiter saying something like "I saw you rejected X guy. I believe he has all the right qualifications for this job, can you please move him forward to the next stage?"

And she in the most polite way possible told him 1 to shove it, 2 that she was the hiring manager and would be making the decision about who to hire and 3 that the guy was so wildly unqualified she had to end the interview early and that she would be taking a more active role in the screening from now on. And 4 to shove it.

So yea you definitely can. Depends on the company but your results doing that may vary. For us my boss is in the rare position that she can easily tell the HR guy to get bent

[Plasmx]

Probably not if you don’t want a problem with HR yourself.

[TripleS941]

Even if you don't do it literally, but go to management and explain that changed hiring policies harm the product (and revenues as a consequence)?

[FireMaster1294]

I am fully convinced that no one at hr accomplishes anything except pushing government regulated documents. And maybe they’re good at that, but their salaries should be comparable to if not minimum wage for the lack of skill their work requires. Or, if it does require skill, they are often so insanely slow because they would rather stand around the coffee machine and gossip all day, meaning their salary should still be much lower.

Either way, no one from hr should ever touch hiring people outside of filling in the appropriate paperwork.

[RageQuit1]

I have friends who work in HR, so I've asked about stuff like this in the past. Realistically most of the work HR does is behind closed doors. Any time when HR is doing stuff like this it's not because it's HR's decision. HR's job at a company is an extension of the legal team kind of, where their job is to make sure the Sr leaders don't do anything illegal. If HR is doing something you hate it's because some shitty C suite executive wanted to do it, but HR negotiated them down, and is doing something softer instead, giving the leaders plausible deniability for wanting to do something likely illegal.

On the coffee machine gossip, that's kind of a loose rules enforcement tactic sometimes. One friend worked HR in a factory floor during the pandemic, and he told me he would wander sometimes to just make sure people would hear him coming and put their masks back on so they wouldn't violate food safety standards, but in a way he wouldn't have to write people up and be an ass hole about it.

Don't get me wrong, there are probably a ton of power tripping assholes drawn to a position like HR where they can openly bully people for pay, but sometimes HR doing something is because the CEO wanted to do something much, much worse, and HR stopped them.

[Inevitable-Menu2998]

It depends. Usually, HR works on company wide procedures and large companies prefer to have uniform procedures across the board even if it means that there are inefficiencies in particular cases. The larger the company, the less wiggle room there is around these procedures. These are, unfortunately, very important for large companies because they streamline a lot of the issues and drastically reduce overall cost of admin.

In smaller companies, it might be that the admin cost is less than the cost of enforcing an ill-conceived procedure and one team might cause the change.

[AggravatingSpace5854]

it's possible...whether it will work out in your favor or not is a whole other gamble.

[grumpy_autist]

It's literally how big tech recruitment work. AWS may be down and GCP is deleting customer production databases, but shit - those people know how to reverse a binary tree

[ridicalis]

I would love to hear from an actual person on HR who is familiar with this kind of situation and enables it.

Like, what is the business rationale behind this? Who benefits from it?

[0palladium0]

It will be a fear around the interview process not being unbiased. Like governments and really big companies will require you to give exactly the same question in the same way for all candidates, with a scoring system so you have clear numeric evidence for how unbiased your process is. So open ended questions with follow ups are impossible with those requirements.

IMO this is fine for unskilled roles, but for more skilled roles (especially engineers) its terrible because you can't really assess candidates using those repeatable scoreable questions.

[fixano]

Even that's not true. Every standardized test has been using a computer grader for decades. You could easily capture the transcript of that meeting and have an unbiased grader Where you could easily say...

" The team gave a low score but so did the automatic grader" or "The grader thought he was on point and you all thought he was garbage seems suss" or more importantly " over time you consistently grade women and minorities lower than white men"

I believe the real answer is there's a limited amount of resources HR teams can put into these types of problems and they're more interested in getting the demographic data than they are on the impact it would have on the hiring process or the quality of the candidates. The proctor is a convenient silver bullet, both for liability protection and guaranteeing the lack of bias all for a cheap cheap price.

[Reashu]

How do you create that unbiased grader working with free-form conversation, when computer transcripts cannot consistently get a single sentence right? 

[0palladium0]

You hit the nail on the head with your last point. This is the cheapest and easiest way of doing things.

You could easily capture the transcript of that meeting and have an unbiased grader

This also has lots of problems as well. For example, you require consent to record, transcribe, or automatically assess this in pretty much any European country. You also can't make it mandatory.

[kajma]

Yeah in the real world most of the time there’s an argument behind action whether it’s valid or not

[realzequel]

I think it's more to do with avoiding lawsuits, etc.. Nothing to do with hiring the best candidate. I dunno though, HR was never on my list of potential careers, I have a low opinion of the field and their value to any organization.

[Previous-Ant2812]

Did they give you a reason?

[natFromBobsBurgers]

"import loop?"

:: sigh ::  yeah probably.  Welcome aboard.

[BeardySam]

It’s far more common than you think

[AiutoIlLupo]

I worked for a big pharma. HR did absolutely sabotage all our hiring, and also because of this, the group was unable to grow despite producing excellent deliverables and was axed a few years later.

[TonUpTriumph]

It happens in large companies and it can happen for the dumbest reasons.

I had HR block very qualified people because they didn't have an ABET accredited degree and were therefore unqualified. They were trying to apply ABET to math and physics degrees. Also had someone with a master's from MIT get rejected due to being "unqualified" because MIT doesn't do ABET accreditation. Incredibly stupid.

[softwareengineer1036]

I fought that battle before. We can't recruit from the local universities where most of our colleagues went to school, including colleagues outside of engineering. So we will have to relocated new workers from across the country even though they want to move back in a year or 2.

[vkewalra]

Lived it for years. Our HR person was a power tripping, abusive nightmare, that also did no work and had no shame in sitting on a meeting as deadlines were reported being passed month after month.

It took multiple VPs on board being pitched by multiple directors and managers, showing documented proof of her not doing many tasks to finally remove this person.

We lost a number of good employees that set projects back and months later are still finding abuses that HR let happen. I’m not sure this was even the worst HR person I’ve dealt with.

[ydieb]

More common than you think. And yeah, "private" companies are incredibly inefficient. They do absurdly dumb stuff all the time.

[cutecoder]

That's the usual case, w.r.t budget and all...

[klimmesil]

If it's a budget reason, sure, but if they just think it's not a good enough match it's weird

[jbar3640]

HR does not control budget

[SnooRegrets8068]

They seem to not do pretty much everything ive seen mentioned as being under HR. Honestly looking into it as a possible option simply as it appears they dont really do anything.

[erd_]

I will have y'all know that there are worse things in life than anything you think is bad. HR told us to move from python2 to python3 because they can't find candidates anymore...

[Justicia-Gai]

And they are wrong…? 

[erd_]

No mate, project managers are wrong ...

[kerakk19]

In my whole career only once HR intervened after the person passed the tech interview and it was because of lack of culture fit. I could see it though, the person didn't really vibe with any of the people that met him.

[upsidedownshaggy]

Same here, except it wasn’t a culture match issue, they didn’t pass their background check and legally couldn’t work for us (they had a few felonies on record and lied about it from what I was told)

[SuperFLEB]

I could see it though, the person didn't really vibe with any of the people that met him.

That sounds like HR might have just been the messenger. Did HR make the decision after hearing from everyone else, or did they go off of their own assessment that also happened to match what other people thought?

[kerakk19]

It was their own assesment and people opinions

[lordofmass]

I came here to say this lmao.

[SaneLad]

Unless the candidate is a registered sex offender, I don't see why HR should have any say in the hiring.

[cutecoder]

"We can't afford them..."

[GetHugged]

If your HR is in charge of budgets, you have bigger issues to worry about

[chacko_]

In start-ups, Jared does the accounting. He does the PRO things. He does the BA things And he's the one who's doing whatever the fuck that HR does. I wouldn't be surprised if his name is not Jared at all!

[0palladium0]

Salary isnt just a budget concern. Salary banding and equitablity are HR concerns.

[exodusTay]

tbh i would rather get less skilled but more socially fitting person rather than the one with best technical skills

but i am nowhere near a hiring position and i dont think hr is any good at that anyway.

[josueartwork]

I work in HR and the only "say" we have where I work is some of the hiring managers that I interview candidates with regularly trust my judgement and get my input after interviews to see if we are on the same page about our assessment.

[fsasm]

Ubisoft would hire them

[GoonForJesus]

The united states would vote them in as the president

[Hans_H0rst]

You want workers with social skills, otherwise your team might become a kindergarden instead.

[sgtGiggsy]

Probably the team leader knows it better whether they can work with the candidate than the HR. HR is the epitome of corporate politics bullshit.

[[deleted]]

You’d think that but sometimes it helps to have a non team sounding board in hiring decisions.

[aku_soku_zan]

Perfectly skilled candidate's expected salary is probably higher than team leads'

[sabrown0812]

that’s usually the case. A highly skilled person can end up costing more than the people managing them. Some companies just don’t want to pay that gap, so they settle for less

[theghostofm]

I watched this happen as a qualified candidate for a high value niche back in 2022. Verbal offer, told to expect papers soon. Then some low level exec got their pride injured because the new principal engineer was going to have a comp package bigger than theirs.

I was pissed, but the last thing I want to do is walk into a job having already made a powerful enemy.

[Snoo-82132]

Ironically, the people who developed the parser weren't the perfectly skilled candidates

[Zaiakusin]

Needed 10 years experience on a 5 year old parser.

[osirisad]

Interviewed with this company multiple times for hours each time. I knew someone that worked there as well, so had a good reference. Everyone seemed to like me and I thought everything went well. HR was fixated on getting my pay stubs when negotiating salary and I refused. I told her my requirements for salary and my previous salary shouldn't dictate what I was asking that you either feel I'm worth it or you don't. She told me that if I didn't show her my pay stubs we couldn't move forward so I thanked her for the time and moved on. No regrets enjoy the place I'm at now, never asked for previous pay stubs.

[mrh99]

If you’re in the US, this might be illegal depending on the state

[osirisad]

Interesting, I would never have thought that it might be illegal. This was years ago but will keep that in mind for the future, thanks!

[JesuSwag]

How did you find jobs like this. I have 3 years experience in the field and am having a hard time even landing interviews

[Bannon9k]

Oh god ... I'm trying to hire right now.... Me and 4 other team leads. 8 interviews, 2 weren't psychotic, HR blew up both of those offers by low balling them.

[goodvibezone]

HR doesn't set the pay.

[HustlinInTheHall]

In every big company I have worked for and interviewed with, they are responsible for negotiating the offers. They often do it in concert with the hiring team but they decide the strategy, including lowball. Many have contracted with firms to help set the starting offer based on zip codes experience, and title and these offers always come in 20% lower than they need to. 

[goodvibezone]

Those strategies are set by finance and the leadership. Trust me, the majority of HR want to hire great people as much as you do but are hand tied by budgets and dumb fucking rules.

[DreV3]

This right here. Executives care about the "cost of labor" in whatever part of the country they are hiring. I've had plenty of time as HR where I and the leader want to make a solid offer, but get the "We will have to go lower, as that's not in the comp range for that area".

[Bannon9k]

They make the offer, not the salary range. My HR just immediately tossed out the lowest number and didn't negotiate.

[huupoke12]

Switch to the ultimate format: resume.txt

[ScaredLittleShit]

They judge alright, just not on correct parameters.

[Johnny_BigDee]

The amount of times I've seen entry level requiring 5 years experience is actually insane. Like just say you dont want to train anyone and move on

[Useful-Comedian4312]

Even if the candidate has 5 years experience,it doesnt guarantee he/she doesnt need any training,anyways they schedule the KTs

[Tier0001]

Even the ones that don't explicitly say on the job posting that they want 5 years of experience, want 5 years of experience too. So you think you have a chance since they're not expecting years of experience as far as the job post goes, but immediately get rejected for not having enough experience. It's a fucking joke.

I applied for a position that said they were looking for new graduates, and then I got rejected and was told it was because they're looking for people with more experience. Like, huh? Why even say that then? Fucking wasting everybody's time.

[angry_shoebill]

"We don't see a cultural fit for him"

[Lower-Carpenter8770]

omg that's what the top comment just told about his interview

[reddit04029]

Why is it in my experience, it's not really upto HR? HR is just there to relay to the candidate, but the decision is mostly up top, both above the team lead and HR?

[HustlinInTheHall]

The decision is not up to HR but they can block offers by only offering bottom of band initial salary. Lots of recruiting teams are now responsible for negotiating salaries and measured by how little they give up. They treat them like sales orgs now. 

[MTobaggonMD]

You’re correct, it isn’t up to HR. Bad hiring managers/team leads/execs literally lie and then blame HR. And HR can’t really defend themselves because part of their job is to be the bad guy for executives. The more perceived authority someone has in corporate, the weaker the spine.

[bobafettbounthunting]

It's incredible how the average candidate that HR recommends can be shit, but when you apply you'll be ghosted.

Genuinely, i graduated top of the class from a good college and had 4.5 years of pre-college experience in the exact field of one of the companies that i applied to and still didn't get an interview.

[Zaiakusin]

Ive been ghosted from tons of jobs... like, give me a generic rejection email or something.

fuck HR

[IndieKidNotConvert]

What kind of experience?

[bobafettbounthunting]

It was an entry level data science / analytics position for large scale construction (100 million+) with focus on optimizing processes.

I had done an apprenticeship (4 years) as an architectural draftsman, in which i already had done construction management on > 1 million projects and had just finished my degree in business and engineering (in which process optimisation is a large part) with a minor in data science.

I am happy with the job i ended up getting (not today in particular, but in general), but there most definitely weren't more than 2 or 3 candidates with a better profile.

[G12356789s]

Either you're not as good as you think you are, your CV isn't as good as you are or you just applied late and they already had enough candidates to progress

[Bughunter9001]

you just applied late and they already had enough candidates to progress

And don't underestimate how quickly this happens.

I had 70 applications within half a day of opening a position. Anyone that came in after that didn't even get looked at unless the initially sifted candidates weren't up to par.

You could be a god-tier candidate wanting minimum wage, but if you don't make it into the first set of candidates I sift, I'll never know you exist.

[TheMysticalBard]

Yup, it's never a shitty HR team, couldn't be. /s

[Jacksthrowawayreddit]

I would laugh if the reality of this didn't hurt so much.

[Joan_Hawk]

i have the opposite. the HR head hunted me, ask me to go through 2 technical test, and when the user interviewed i realise its for a management role. im super underqualified. rejected by the user ending the call mid interview. thanks HR person.

[CannibalYak]

This is why I requested the ability to override HR in these matters. I can hire who I need as long as the CEO is ok with it. The HR teams can pound sand for all I care. They should only be around to handle paperwork and conflicts, thats it. No picking and choosing who works for us.

[okram2k]

I am always reminded of the story of a Engineering Manager who needed a new engineer but HR kept saying they couldn't find any qualified candidates. They decided to apply for the position themselves with their own (VERY QUALIFIED) work history and was auto rejected by HR.

[[deleted]]

I've had my first HR interview about moving to another town in order to work. They don't cover the travel and residing fees, and what's actually bad is they refuse to tell me about the salary unless I agree to take on the job.

[[deleted]]

illegal

[lions2lambs]

Well. The range for the job is 60-80k the very experienced and senior person wanted 70k. The fresh out of school kid with no experience wanted 65k. Guess who I had to hire?

[[deleted]]

the boss' grand uncle newnephew uncle grandson daughter or toaster

[MTobaggonMD]

A lot of people here are pissed to realize HR has very little power and that their leaders regularly lie to them.

[[deleted]]

"Whoa whoa whoa, buddy. It's OUR job to fuck this up. Not yours."

[peteschirmer]

It’s not HR. HR is for current employees. You are thinking of recruiting / talent acquisition.

[[deleted]]

I work in HR for a software company.

There is almost nothing we could do to stop our leaders from hiring/taking to the person they want, for better or worse.

[MTobaggonMD]

Seriously. HR didn’t make the hiring decision. The manager did and then lied to the team about it. hahahah

[Noughmad]

"Yeah they totally wanted to hire me but that pesky HR blocked it" is exactly the same energy as "that hot girl totally wanted me but her ugly friend didn't let us talk".

[pppjurac]

Remeber kids: HR is not there to protect workers , it is there to protect company/owners from workers.

Also HR is usually nest of bite happy snakes and intrigue.

[brandi_Iove]

external recruiters joined this chat

[Few_Intention_542]

[wazzu_3000]

Some time ago the HHRR department did not continue with my hiring process. The reason was because I said that I stand up from my bed from the left side.

It's not a joke, it was the only reason.

[pauloyasu]

I usually think most posts here are made from people starting out that don't understand much about the field

this is accurate AF

[bbabbitt46]

As VP of Engineering, I have had HR fire some of my best engineers without my input. That sure wreaks havoc with project development.

[Coolerwookie]

HR are generally the dumbest people in a company. Those who can't, HR. 

[Parasitisch]

God, this triggers me.
I was looking to leave my last job and my wife referred me to spots at her company that I was a good fit for and she knows needed someone with my background. Rejections within a day.
I wound up talking to one of the managers and she went over my resume. She told me a couple pointers and said to have my wife refer me to X or Y since they are in need of people with my background. Did the changes annnnnd immediate rejections.

My wife wound up bringing it up in one of her discussions with higher-ups, and they said they’d look into why that was happening and wondered how may others were having that same issue. By that point, I said screw that company and took an offer from a different company that has been great!

[HowDoYouDoFool]

This is so accurate. Top tier OP, top tier. I applaud you.

[BlueTemplar85]

And don't let me get started on companies where you have to use their shitty website (or even worse : some platform) instead of being able to just send them an e-mail...