One of the Worst Meetings of my Life

Well 2nd worst. The first one was when I landed a meeting with this startup in NYC that gad this preposterous idea to start a whole channel devoted to Food!? We didn't get the account but as I got in the elevator with my associate I said "Yeah, like anyone is going to watch a 'Food Network' "

This past Friday we were called in to make peace with the HR department of an old client. My partner has been recruiting for them since they were 20 people and now they have 2000. So the Executives call her directly when internal recruitment isn't doing the job for them. Then she ends up filling the role and HR has a hissy fit. Which is what happened this time.

They have a new Recruitment or Talent Acquisition or the nom du jour that they like to go by. We met with him, and the internal recruiter with the problem.

Well this guy filled my bullshit bingo card in 5 minutes.

I-9	Clean Stream	Workers Comp	Full Time	GSR
Hiring Manager	COBRA	Payroll	Blocking and Tackling	Rightsizing
Interview	Part Time	HUMAN RESOURCES BINGO (free square)	Stakeholder	Survey
Bandwidth	Centers of Excellence	Best Practices	Efficiencies	Orientation
Employees	Background	Underwater Options	Strategic	Job Postings

I usually stay quiet at these types of meetings (believe it or not) and only speak to protect my partner's interest.

Their entire gripe centered around this one candidate who said he was confused because he was being reached out to internally and by us. After they brought this up for the 4th tim, I'd had enough. Finally I said "What is the big deal about this candidate? He didn't even get the job! So what if he was contacted by 2 different parties. THAT's A GOOD THING! That means we are on the same page. What is the problem here??"

Anyway, it went on and on. And nothing will change. The execs will still call my partner directly. She will fill their roles and HR will have a hissy fit. This is really our only big company client and we're not good at playing by the "rules."

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Comment by Sandra McCartt on September 24, 2011 at 11:02pm: That would be what we call a "Gong Show" I always have these halucinations about being able to push a button, a Gong goes off like it did on the old Gong Show, a duck drops down and ponks the Mr Bubba R. Bizspeak with a rubber chicken then says something like, " Quack, put that in your bandwidth and see if you can rightsize your underwater ops bullshit before your stakeholders leave a big footprint in the middle of your clean stream.

There is a web site that creates nonsensical sentences using all the bullshit buzzwords that is hilarious. One of the guys i follow on twitter uses it when he gets one of those tweets that don't make any sense. He takes the nonsensical sentence and tweets it back as a reply. Might be a good thing to use with this paragon of jargon.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on September 25, 2011 at 1:49pm: @Bill, I have to laugh. Not at you or even with you, but at the scenario playing-out again and again in my instant replay imagination of deja vu moments like the one you experienced and shared here.

Aren't those priceless? Working and trying to work with HR?

Forgive my repeat performance here but one of my past posts featured a visual inspired by you that says it all...

If most hiring managers knew what games many (not all) HR staffing types play in blocking external recruiters, who can actually fill their hard-to-fill openings,...they would (should) cocoon them and convert them into speed bumps befitting their role in the recruitment process.

Your thoughts?

*This blog post was inspired by Bill Schultz's Forum post on May 25, 2011, on RecruitingBlogs:

Got Sent This Fee Agreement Yesterday and in it was this little did...

Comment by Sandra McCartt on September 25, 2011 at 2:17pm: If I start training recruiting dogs I am going to train one specifically to sniff out HR candidates and name him,"buzzword"

Comment by Bill Schultz on September 25, 2011 at 2:34pm: V- its the same customer.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on September 25, 2011 at 2:51pm: @Sandra...the unfortunate aspect of the Gong Show is that many of them are controlled by HR. HR browbeats hiring management, or artfully convinces them, that it's in their best interest to allow HR to manage the barbarians at the gate. HR makes the call and it's the external recruiter who gets GONGED out of the opportunity to be of service. That sound of being gonged by HR still rings in my good ear. Gonged by an HR gatekeekper.

However, I must admit, when I was in the role of HR Staffing Manager--I did relish the role of gonging an assorted number of external recruiters who attempted to get past me and on to my hiring managers. I guess it goes with the territory one has responsibility for--but in my defense, I only gonged those who had a gong coming. You know the type...foam on the lip and blood in their claws...the ones that feed on the vary employer they're also on contract to serve. Those deserved a GONG.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on September 25, 2011 at 2:56pm: B--that's funny. Look at the bright side. It made me laugh.

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on September 26, 2011 at 1:59pm: this is nuts. If my company was going outside for a hard to fill position I'd let out a sigh of relief and go work on something else. Stupid to compete with your own resources.... gives smart corporate recruiters a bad name. :)

Comment by Darryl Dioso on September 26, 2011 at 2:10pm: "Bullshit bingo card" - classic.

Comment by John Comyn on September 27, 2011 at 3:32am: I love it! They are livid when you take the "by pass HR" route. Look it's not always the way to go but one must do what you have to do. hahahaha. Perhaps someone can post a piece on "5 ways to heal HR's broken ego".

Comment by Scott Corwin on September 27, 2011 at 10:11am: Unfortunately Amy you are a rare breed in Corporate HR roles. Almost without exception in my 15 plus years, HR is threatened by outside recruiters. One of my favorite rules from HR - if the candidate is in our system we will not pay you. System defined as, "internal database, maybe
the job boards, if I can find them anywhere on the internet, or I just don't feel like paying you for your time because it makes me look bad." Using the first example - in our database - so congrats you have a candidate in your database that YOU didn't even contact. Now that I have qualified them, spent time with them, educated them about your company and position, obtained and exclusive right to present, and submitted them over to you...

Ok, sorry about the rant. I guess this battle of internal HR and outside recruiters is as
old as recruiters fighting with sales people.

The only solutions is to clone Amy.