Human Resources: The Expert Novices


Originally posted: March 10th, 2008

This pretty much encapsulates exactly what is wrong with the field of Human Resources:

"I don't know anything about programming, but I'm very good at identifying people who are good at it."

That is a real quote. I was actually told that by a recruiter I met with a few months ago. Needless to say, I never called them back.

The saying "It takes one to know one" isn't just a generic insult. It's the honest truth when it comes to identifying skill. HR people should just stick to payroll (Or then again, maybe leave that to the real accountants).

As long as I'm ranting about HR, here's a classic excerpt from "Joel on Software" that I couldn't have worded any better:

"The recruiters-who-use-grep, by the way, are ridiculed here, and for good reason. I have never met anyone who can do Scheme, Haskell, and C pointers who can't pick up Java in two days, and create better Java code than people with five years of experience in Java, but try explaining that to the average HR drone."

- The Perils of JavaSchools: Joel on Software: Joel Spolsky

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