It's no secret that I am a VP at a BB in a BO role. I post sparingly on WSO now simply because I love the role I'm in, love the BB and it keeps me quite busy.
fFor some background, you can see the post I've made on . . .
* [A senior that did coffee chats right and I helped them land a FT role](https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/how-one-st…)
* [I did an Q&A on OCR](https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/q&a-i-do-o…)
* [I did an Q&A after managing some analysts](https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/q&a-just-f…)
This time I'm going to focus on OCR as it stands in the Fall of 2019 and some of the problems that I've seen. I have no doubt that some of your resumes have come across my desk and here's why you're not getting those calls back.
####1) How I get your resume into our company database
Getting your resume from an OCR, like a career fair, and into a company database can be a tricky thing. It can get lost, wrinkled, not submitted by the rep on time. Most of the time, I just take a picture of the resume and send it in via my phone. Do reps take the highest quality pic *every* single time of every single resume? Maybe/maybe not, its a crapshoot sometimes depending on lighting
####2) From HR to a committee
Your resume made it safely to HR. So now it goes out to a committee of people. This will vary by group, but I can tell you that at my BB we have about 15 people on that committee and we can get anywhere from 15 - 40 resumes at a time for selection and ranking. Maybe those people looked at your resume in a rush, maybe those people looked at your resume on a small screen like a phone, maybe someone intended to give you a higher ranking than they actually did because the grid was so small and it had too many names on it.
####3) When resume order matches the ranking grid
When I get the resumes, they're usually in a large PDF. Sometimes the order of the resumes matches the ranking grid. Sometimes it doesn't - let me tell you, it's A LOT easier when it does, otherwise I'm unlikely to sit there and hunt down everyone's name. The worst case scenario - and this *does* happen - is that I have a resume in my PDF but that name doesn't appear anywhere on the grid. Sorry, kid, can't rank you, HR left you off the grid.
####4) HR might give us a faulty PDF
So now I have to scroll through all the resumes and every once in a while the resumes are in a funny order or have pages out of sequence. Last year I saw a resume that had a "second page" that looked like it belonged there because it had the same font, but the sequence and text made no sense; HR gave us a faulty PDF. So that's two people affected because someone's second page was lost and another person's resume had a phantom second page associated with it. "This kid's resume makes no sense to me, I'm ranking them low"
####5) Our black-hole of a formula
Now I and my colleagues take our rankings and put them in to a black-hole of a formula and it's out of my hands. Were the rankings tabulated correctly? Did all committee members reply with rankings? Hard to say.
Wait! I know what you're thinking: **"But Mr. GoingToBeAnMD, none of those items are my fault, I have no control over those!"**
####Sometimes there will be things completely out of your control
And that's exactly right. And that's exactly the whole point of this post. I know that this time of year can create a lot of anxiety and work on your part to land that ideal role. I see all of you at career fairs and interviews and you're all doing your best to put the best version of you out there and I commend you for all of that. But you're just going to have to accept that sometimes there will be things completely out of your control that affect your recruiting experience.
**Please don't beat yourselves up** over a botched call or interview or a missed OCR. There's a *ton* of reasons why a position didn't work out for you. Everything happens for a reason and the powers above will put you right where you should be.
I wish everyone a good recruiting season and I hope to meet some of you out there!
Thanks OP, appreciate your kind intentions to alleviate anxiety for those going through recruitment, and agreed that it is a practical approach to move on / not get hung up on particular processes.
Having said that though, I frankly find errors / negligence in HR processes are taken too lightly. Things you mentioned like losing resumes, faulty PDFs, taking unreadable photos are so basic, that it just shouldn't happen - in one incidence during my recruitment days, I went to the bank's office and took a modeling test where case study materials given to me were missing an appendix. Imagine my surprise when I realised that after submission and was discussing the model with other schoolmates.
HR is still a professional job, and warrants professional standards. If we start accepting this behavior as the norm and extend it to other professions, everything would go to the crapper - imagine doctors go 'relax patients, its not your fault, our facility might not use the right medicine, might not interpret X-rays correctly, might slip up in surgery, but just move on'
Good post - this shows how messed up HR really is, and on so many different levels. Going through this narrative / example, essentially the takeaway is:
TL, DR: let's not romanticize HR screw ups. Also, this post should be titled "why HR sucks a** "