Anatomy of a Corporation - Pt. 1 The HR Department

As yours truly is now entertaining the thought of moving back to a larger corporate environment and away from the high powered world of consulting I will take this opportunity to elaborate a bit on the different functions and departments that can be found in larger corporations. In case someone doesn't know, I spent several years in such a corporate entity before moving into consultancy so allow me to think back. A little retrospect if you will.

Anatomy of a Corporation - Pt. 1 The HR Department

This is a department I have a complicated relationship with, it can very much be defined as a love-hate relationship from my side.

So, to begin with, what's good about the department? Well, the people is usually among the nicest, most considerate people you can find inside a company, the ratio of women is usually also pretty high which, in my opinion, is a very good thing. They actually seem to care about people to some degree and are usually pleasant to talk to.

That said... The problem with the Human Resources department is also pretty straightforward; they have no idea what they are doing. Usually they know next to nothing about the actual business and what is going on, their knowledge is purely theoretical at best and they usually follow some HR guidelines which are usually done by the HR department and has very little to do with the reality of the company as a whole. Given adequate instructions on the kind of person we would be looking for they could sometimes, come up with decent candidates, but more often than not it was quicker and better if we did it ourselves through an agent.

So in summary, it's a great department in that it has plenty of nice considerate people, but unfortunately they rarely know what's up and what's down, but hey, most of the time noone does anyway.