The power HR have is unbelievable
You're a high-achieving student target university, top grades, great extracurriculars, rockstar internships and you apply for an IB internship.
The person that then decides whether your CV will be passed on for a first-round interview or actually even does the first-round interview is a low achieving, not very smart, unambitious woman in HR.
I've studied business and it is insane how many people (usually women) who had no idea what they wanted to do and didn't put in any effort into their careers then go into recruitment/HR.
And then these people are gatekeepers to whether you actually get to speak to a competent employee or not. How does this make sense?
Same thing applies to the admissions offices of elite universities. Similar type of person, often pretty mediocre, but they inexplicably wind up with the power to dramatically change people's lives.
I think for universities, there's a committee with hopefully some people being competent enough.
I love the fact that some mediocre old fart that probably did nothing useful with their life probably reviewed our admissions applications, whilst dribbling milk all over their chin. Such a joke
No one ends up in a administration university role who isn't mediocre in ambition or ability. Could say same for most professors as well outside of those who do meaningful research
Not really, HR is quite expendable (as they don't really have any concrete skills) and can thus be replaced if the hiring managers decide the general quality of the pool is lower for some reason
This ^
HR usually just has a copy pasta req sent over for whatever position and don't care enough to learn more or ask any additional flavor questions. Once you can squeak past them (this is why we preach networking so hard here, because it has absolute value over all these HR heathens) and talk to an actual member of the target group or the director themselves, it's an entirely different ball game.
Once you learn the key aspect of HR it makes professional life a lot easier to deal with: HR isn't there to help you as a prospect, current employee or especially as a former employee. They're only there to protect the company. End of story. They exist because they're a cheap way to weed out potentially very costly or criminal issues and free up actual value generators like just about everyone but them do just that and add value.
Totally right, but you could still be that person who got rejected by HR before they got called out for hiring a shitty pool of people. The point still stands that they have a crazy amount of power over hiring decisions and often times will pick awful candidates over better ones in the eyes of the team. The worst is when they unilaterally decide to bring in an awful candidate over a very qualified one due to the former candidate being a tangential diversity candidate. I know it's a whole separate debate but let's be real, if the quota is filled for diversity hires and we are looking to hire for one more spot, I fully expect to speak to the better candidate rather than the one who fits into the firm's overly broad diversity mandate.
Thank you for expressing exactly how workplace and hiring discrimination takes place. Firstly, what is a "better candidate"? As a statement, that objectively relies on the subjective judgement of the people doing the interviewing. Of course you're not a racist, but the best fit for your team is the guy who likes a lot of the same things you do, because he or she has a similar background/upbringing. They'll definitely be the best hire from a cultural standpoint! I mean, after all, it's only one spot, and there is a huge firm hiring for lots of other open spots on other teams behind you who can hire diverse candidates.
Except, historically, all those groups are run by white guys, and all of them want to hire for the same qualities - the golfing buddy's kid, the guy who was in the same frat in college, etc. So every position ends up getting filled that way, and not one of them was done for the purpose of excluding people of color - it's just that the system is already biased towards hiring white guys from well-off backgrounds.
And I understand the concept that occasionally you get a truly unqualified minority that slips through the process. Does that happen any more often than an unqualified white person slipping through? I doubt it. They just come through different channels. It's easy to paint with a broad brush and make the assumption that anyone coming through HR as a "diversity hire" is automatically unqualified because of the manner in which they came to be sitting across from you in an interview, because that allows everyone to not have to examine the shitty candidates that get hired all the time because the hiring MD and his father play golf together, or because he went to whatever random school has a weirdly high presence in your team's analysts.
I thought, at least for a bank's core schools, alumni review the resumes?
At top ivory towers, yes.
I reviewed candidates from W and O when I was at ROTH/CVP.
Ah, good to see my daily dose of entertainment is back
Didn't you supposedly work at PJT RSSG?
The post is more focused on Europe where HR dominates the recruitment process, not sure about the US. Also, it applies to other careers, not just banking.
Who downvoted this post? What the fuck is wrong with you?
HR is crap.
Bump
Bump
Bump
Bump
HR is a joke.
Revenge of the C student that's unqualified to talk about the job they claim to be "recruiting" for.
Not sure why it's not abolished.
aww did the privileged white male from Connecticut get denied from GS?
Ah. An enabler of mediocrity.
Just like you, HR shouldn't be anywhere near high finance.
:)
No such thing as a meritocracy, everyone is mediocre or just got very very lucky to some degree.
imagine using the term "high finance" LMAO
yes bc the majority of hedge fund analysts are certainly not "mediocre", as can be seen by the excellent performance in a wide array of strategies such as macro, l/s, etc...
oh wait..
HR or not HR, you have to play the game. If you cannot pass a gatekeeper how do you expect to poach a lucrative client or convince your boss to give you a rise without him immediately looking for a replacement? Unfortunately, it is a reality of things. At one of the shops, we used to have this loud lady who would lose her sh*t for no reason (dealing with invoices for >20 years who wouldn't). Whenever, I would get a new junior, I would send him/her to this lady with a couple of requests:
Serious, like "ABC bank did not pay for trades X Y and Z, can you chase?"
+
Crap, like "Where is the key from the clearing house" or bag her to sell SX5E 3400 Puts and don't come back unless she agrees.
She would obviously go ballistic but if they handle themselves well you know they would behave themselves well on the phone. Bringing me to the point, that on top of the standard interview process and technical skills, there is also a factor of being able to play the game. Same goes for sports, personal life and many other areas. Take it easy and do not stress :)
Fantastic take
What is this?
This is not a game. It shouldn't be, at least.
When people actively admit they're playing a game that makes no sense and that's how things are, that is borderline brainwashing and insanity. Snap out of it.
If something is flawed, fix it. Don't just be fatalistic and accept mediocrity.
Nothing worse than "just how it goes" or "that's just the way it is" - type responses.
HR are problematic and unintelligent. Recruiting should not be problematic or unintelligent.
Thus HR should not be involved in recruiting.
It's a numbers game, I know I'm not in IB but I have my application/resume folder saved and there's 350 PDFs in it (tweaked my resume for each application). It's just how it is, anything worth wanting will be competitive. All of it just to get one internship offer, maybe 5 serious interviews over the phone and 10-15 bs hirevues lol. It'll be worth it in the end.
In other words, if you have connections, the quality of your resume or your intelligence or work ethic doesn't matter, you can get an interview.
Why is that better than weighting the resume screening process so that people who don't have those connections can get through more easily? Why is wealth and privilege an allowable shortcut to getting one of a super limited number of seats, but ethnic background isn't? Again, same as with college admissions, you cannot claim about some aspect of the system not being meritocratic because it favors historically disenfranchised groups, and then turn around and defend the exact same system when it gives an unfair advantage to a group that has a ton of power and privilege. Either the [hiring process/college admissions process/etc] should be merit-based, in which case both diversity hiring and hiring based on personal connections are wrong, or it's okay to weight hiring decisions based on external factors, such as ethnic background or who daddy knows.
OP user name checks out . . .
Lets see - either an entire group of professionals is universally incompetent, or maybe the butthurt student is incapable of realizing that if he can't spot the single idiot in the room, it's him. Wonder what is statistically more likely...
It's more that no one sets out in university or high school with the goal to be an HR professional. They fall into it because they don't want to be unemployed. That then results in most (obv not all) HR professionals being terrible at their jobs.
This comes from my POV, others' POV, and from family facing issues with HR when running a business.
You didn't. That doesn't mean no one does.
Even granting you are correct, your complaint is entirely predicated on the fact that you "deserve" this job. How many IB internships are applied for every year? How many spots are there? How many of the applicants have exactly the same qualifications, because they've been taking the same advice on how to build a resume that banks will be interested in?
Moreover, doesn't it occur to you that of course it would be some of the less valuable employees of a company that will screen resumes? You think some Director at JP Morgan has time to read 500 copies of essentially the same resume? They have better shit to be doing, and interns are a low value use of time, let alone vetting them. Why do you think you should be passed on to someone "competent" to speak to?
By the tenor of your post, you are an entitled and pushy kid who expects to be handed what they "deserve" over everyone else who feels the exact same way for the exact same reasons. Moreover, someone managing to speak down to (a) "lower level" employees and (b) women in general in a 15 second post is probably giving off the same vibes in the application process, consciously or not. That actually is a function of HR - cover the company's ass by not hiring walking litigation targets.
Sounds like those incompetent women are doing their job quite well, thanks.
I actually thought about working in HR at one point. Made it high enough in some finance clubs at my school that I was able to vet/interview candidates for the club and it was a pretty fun process actually. The problem is that it's basically a requirement to be a woke liberal to work at any decently sized firm in an HR role.
This is a pretty gross take. You forget that not everyone has the same opportunities at the full opportunity set. For me, it was pretty easy to focus on schoolwork, research highest paid careers, be able to quantify the sacrifice, etc. My parents pushed education and high paying jobs / opened up that opportunity set. Obviously I had to work for it, but I knew what I was working for.
Not everyone knows what a "front office banking" job is (just as people joke on this website that their friends think they're bank tellers). This might sound foreign to you, but for 90%+ of Americans, they don't know that decisions made in high school (in terms of doing well) impact their career choices.
Also, what's your solution? Seems to me that you think that banking is a pretty important job in comparison to HR. Are you proposing that instead of going to a client meeting, the VP should screen 350 resumes?
yes the evil women are keeping you young, bright, men down!! :((((
Bruh no one said evil, just incompetent
Lol dude you’re just making it worst. Are there incompetent people everywhere? Ya. Should you be paranoid about women or hr? No.
If I had made this post, there would have been a hundred replies calling me a rich arrogant jerk who looks down on others and thinks he’s better than everyone else cause I went to good schools and have rich parents, but this OP gets tons of supportive replies lol.
If you can't convince even a "low achieving, not very smart, unambitious woman" that you are competent enough for a job she knows nothing about, then what does that make you?
Probably a mouth breather who can't stop using 4chan lingo like 'based' or hold a conversation.
Drumpfy my man, I was hoping you would come on my post with your dog shit opinion
You admit she has very little knowledge of the job? How then would she know who is competent and who isn't?
Probably because she's being given a list of criteria to look for on any given resume that either gets an applicant tossed or passed on. Even if you're assuming that everyone in HR is a barely competent mook, they're still being given instructions by the very people that OP wants to be hired by. It's not as though HR is going rogue and deciding that in 2022 they're only hiring MFAs instead of MBAs. If you're not getting through the screening process with HR, it means that you are such a dummy that even HR can spot you aren't qualified.
Plus, this "incompetent woman" is looking at thousands of resumes a year (probably - a lot, lets say) and certainly has a better idea of what makes a good candidate than this idiot OP. He thinks he's some kind of genius, god's gift to the banking community, when my strong guess is that his resume is identical to nearly every other person applying for the job.
Don't bother, these women are delusional.
I don't even know where to start with the arrogance on this post. I pity your future team.
HR doesn't really decide who gets interviews lol.....
Exactly. So much incel whining on this forum in 2022 it's ridiculous.
Yeah, they're just young and naive I guess. For OP, I guess it varies by the bank a bit but HR is not deciding your fate. If the bankers want you there, you will get an offer.
I got rejected from a position at a startup and then emailed the one of the Founders / CEO. He gave my info to HR, who is now speeding me through the process. I have a phone interview Friday, and fingers crossed I will have a nice full time job while I go to school.
Anyone who fits the profile of "high-achieving student target university, top grades, great extracurriculars, [with] rockstar internships" would never have to rely solely on HR's competence to get an interview, because that person would have figured out a way to get on the radar of decision makers a long time before it came down to a decision by HR.
I disagree with this take as much as I disagree with OP's. Not 20-year old knows there's another route (I for sure didn't, and I don't blame myself for not knowing)
Having family who runs analyst programs and reviews insane amounts of resumes for what ends up being a handful of spots:
1) While some HR staff are absolute garbage (as there are really poor performers in all groups, literally everywhere), there are a lot of people who work in the COO or HR roles that are quite bright, are very driven, and they chose the role because they are more of a people person than a number cruncher. There's a lot more of prep work than you think behind the scenes.
2) For specific programs, they can know exactly what is necessary by the criteria that is provided, and when they aren't sure, the team heads are helping filter candidates. It is usually not one person who makes the decision. Even the screening interviews are concocted in specific ways to filter candidates.
3) There are a lot of very well qualified candidates from schools around the world vying for limited spots. While yours may look good to you, most of the time, there's someone else's resume which looks & reads better, and it was crafted specifically for the role you also applied to. Even coming from an Ivy, those ambitious students in the same classes and clubs you are in are applying to the same position.
If you're not getting selected, maybe there's a reason for it instead of blaming HR right out the gate.
Man are people blind on here or what. I have an offer from a BB. I hate having to say it because its completely besides the point
That's great, good for you!
But from actually being in the industry, part of a recruiting process, and seeing what/how they work, the comment comes off in poor taste - sounds pretty damn sexist, arrogant and naïve. If they perform poorly in their job, the whole team/group/company suffers from it. There's way more involved than you know of, and I'll admit myself, more than I originally thought.
Coming from someone who is currently finishing their stint at a BB, if you really do have an offer at one, I'd suggest keeping those types of remarks to yourself, especially in this day and age. That type of talk won't fly.
Realize there is more to getting a job at a top firm then good grades. It would be similar to saying the best quarterback in the NFL is strictly based on who can throw the ball the farthest.
Also realize, for a lot of these jobs (that require "smart" people), its less about talent and skill and more about knowing where to look/having money. Take doctors for example, a lot of being able to becoming a doctor is really pegged more to who can afford to go to medical school, and who has parents/someone who can support them while they are there. I know people who went to medical school/have PHD more because their parents could afford to float them during that time than just being the smartest/brightest. Same with HR roles. If you're a parent, say you had a child that is capable but not the smartest or the most driven; you know that an HR role at say JPM is one of the better jobs they can get, most likely better than being a teacher.
Not to stereotype, but most women in HR are probably there for a couple of reasons (1) pays well without having much skill besides being personable/basically a corporate "model" (2) has somewhat of a "sorority" feel to it (if you do college recruitment; basically just going to colleges talking to students and drinking after) (3) they probably came from a family where their mother didn't work/worked in HR, and they're not going to get a job in something else.
This is spot on, especially the doctor comment. I have a cousin that brags about how smart she is since she's in medical school but she fails to ever admit that the only reason she can even survive is because she's got a rich boyfriend taking care of her rent + food, with rich doctor/surgeon parents that can give her advice/provide for her at any point in time. It giver her time to just focus on studying and a peace of mind, while other medical students have to rack up crazy amount of debt and constantly worry about non-medical school related stuff.
wait until you get a wife... not only will she tell you want to do.. you will like it.....
Based on the post, doubt a woman is in OP's future. "High achieving student" and "rockstar internships" just don't drop panties like they used to....
I’m sure no one likes HR and neither do I but I believe you should chill.
I think about it like this: if you were the only applicant, they’d pass you on. Hell, if you were the only applicant with a particular experience, they’d pass you on. But how many people do you think apply who all have your exact same background and experience? Everyone here always talks big about targets but don’t realize that the end result is that all of you are applying from the same universities, have the same internships, come from the same neighborhood even. Give me your precise stats and I assure you that HR got another CV with the exact GPA you had, the exact major, the exact internships you did, and the exact volunteer work. To them you all look the same so they mostly look at the small differentiators that they are told to look at.
Don’t blame them. They are literally going over thousands of applications of which at least 20 are exact clones of you. They do an ok job of sorting through that but if you don’t want to depend on them just network. Seriously. I’ve had 4 jobs in my life and of those only 1 was a through a normal HR process. Just talk to people. Stop blaming Stacy who has to choose if she extends an interview to Brent or Brett with the exact same stats so she has to google which letter between ‘n’ and ‘t’ is more prestigious.
A million times this. Sometimes it's unusual skills, or non-obvious ones, which are valuable. If all a group wants is someone to run excel spreadsheets all day, they have their pick of thousands of candidates. What they want are kids who can do other things - have some charisma, can write well, have other interests besides "uhhh I was in the finance and investing club in college!" At the end of the day, analysts don't drive revenue. And hiring departments are going to want to hire people who one day will drive revenue. If you look like every other generic person/resume, then why should you (generically speaking) be picked, except your own sense of entitlement? If you show that maybe 5 years down the road you'll be someone who can be trusted to interface with clients, that is valuable, and that isn't coming through because you can bang out an LBO model 2 minutes faster than the class average.
The most successful bankers I knew when I was on the Street (so, anecdotal, grain of salt, etc) were the ones who actually had a life, and interests, outside their job. The guys who pretty obviously were putting in 10 hour days, and then going home and watching TV and then falling asleep to do it all over again... they get stuck, because having no charisma means not bringing in business, which means no huge bonuses.
I've posted on this thread twice and both posts disappeared.
I think at most banks there is no problem, but some banks give all of the recruiting power to hr it's ridiculous.
This one bank, I got a referral from the head of the entire department AND head of the internship program and still did not get an interview because the HR person overlooked me. Oh, and the bank doesn't do resumes -- wtf else am I supposed to do???
.
HR is the scum of the earth
Complaining about HR like when I was a second year analyst I wasn’t doing like 15 kids interviews and deciding if they got a second round off 3 hours of sleep while I sat there and and read the news and scrolled on Reddit as they told me about whatever club they did at their college or about the unpaid internship their dad got them.
Having just wrapped our internship recruiting for the first semester I can say having HR is god send. The amount of shit applications that pass through a portal is unbelievable. Like its insane. It is not possible to give full time to your job and go through every application at the same time. That's where HR comes in. In my experience they were good in weeding out the really shit candidates and leaving behind the one's they thought were more interesting. There were CVs that came to me which were good but others were simply better and I made a choice to reject. You simply do not have the time to go through each one. However, if i'm recruiting and you d reach out to me and i like your profile for sure the HR will not be rejecting you. If you're good and HR is still rejecting you then that is because either you have a typo in your CV or because you did not bother to put in the effort to network so that the person you network with is willing to bat for you. Sometimes, you might do every thing right and still not get a call because the guy you reached out to you flaked or just forgot due to workload.
Now I don't mean to say HR is perfect. Far from it. But just giving another side of the same coin.
You could just code an AI algorithm to separate the best / worst candidates. Saves money for the bank.
On HR:
- First of all, there are all types of HR people: I have seen some of the best behavioural analysts and soft skills trainers in HR
- However, agree that only a very small percentage of people have excellent HR skills - the challenge is that while the employees are trained in soft skills, the HR team is never trained in business (or at least understanding the business process at least).
- The world has become "key-word defined world" for them - including in hiring. I can give you an example: just because a person has an FRM and a business degree (including truly yours), people will keep getting calls for model validation work instead of credit structuring (which can be gleaned if you look at the full resume and understand that work)
The issue is simple - there are very few HR professionals who try to understand your prior work (also this is limited to a large extent because these people have never been part of running a business).
- Also when I came to US, I used to think meritocracy should be the only criterion. However there are a lot of political considerations to be managed which gets assigned to these HR professionals and they execute it
-A lot of these HR people simply come from recruiting background. However company HRs hardly do any research themselves (om employees, trends etc)
-Many places HR activities are outsourced to agencies (at least a large part of it apart from top level policies) - there, the HR has no incentive in keeping the employee motivated. The higher the turnover, higher the work, more the job security (continuous work)
-The HR never sits through discussions on individual employees but sits through in firing (with no knowledge of the employees work)!
You know what's worse than HR?
Random workers getting assigned to doing interviews.
You're working on some important project, really focused and in the zone. Then your boss or someone of similar seniority says "Hey, could you to step in for x and join these couple of interviews next week, it's only going to last for [3-9] hours."
So you join in, but haven't got the faintest idea what to look for in these interviews. You know damn well that anyone could be the best bullshit artist in the world, and take you for a ride. And when you think of it, your own subconscious biases could be at work.
It's really unfortunate, because for you - a clueless interviewer, pretty much base your judgement on things like:
1) Does the person look presentable?
2) Does their resume match with what they're telling you?
3) Would you want to spend a lot of time around this person? Based on the few minutes you've been in the same room. The typical "airport test".
If you buy into the idea that it takes 10000 hours to master something, you'll have to agree that the vast majority of people that interview others, are complete beginners. I've been in my fair share of interviews, but I don't think I've even cracked 100 hours in total.
I remember in my younger days we received 7,000 resumes for 3 full time jobs... HR has a role and they do it well to help their companies.. keep in mind for whatever reason... 6997 got dinged...
This is pretty true. You grind and spend hours at library, networking, trying to secure a top internship, etc. and the gatekeeper was some alcoholic 2.0 GPA comm major in college who just follows what instragram tells her
Hence to work on people skills
The post is an accurate and flexible financial model is a critical component of a robust valuation. It started by giving a basic understanding for accounting and excel functions used which helps in understanding the concept of valuation and modelling better.
Tbh whenever I recruit I usually just reach out to people on the team directly. i only ever deal with HR for scheduling calls.
LISTEN.
HR literally caused WW II.
At the end of the day, if some unqualified sack of maggots hadn't rejected Hitler from art school, when he was clearly deserving of acceptance, then the world wouldn't have had to go through hell and entire generations wouldn't have been wiped out.
This is why HR shouldn't have power. You never know who they're going to inappropriately reject next.
If you are relying on HR to get you to the decision makers you are doing this wrong and it says more about you than them.
Where I will agree with you is that these morons are the ones put in charge of making job qualifications and are the primary reason why companies can't seem to hire people "with the right skills" it is usually becuase the requirements have little to nothing to do with the actual job or it is because the skills required are impossible to have. This happens all the time in the tech space. HR thinks they are cute by requiring 5 years of experience for an entry level programing job in languages that haven't even existed for 5 years.
This has lead to rampant lying on resumes, it has gotten so bad that you can't really even fire people for it anymore unless it is egregious i.e. lying about where you went to school, have worked in the past, or if you hold a degree or qualification or not. No one gets busted anymore for lying about their skills because everyone knows that everyone does it.
Babe wake up, HR made another stupid fucking decision
Was named A2A by MD and got stamped by group head. Promotion got denied by HR.
What the FUCK.
Aliquid quidem dicta eos quae. Alias quos corrupti pariatur sequi. Sapiente minus molestias fugiat sunt qui nemo. Aut qui impedit aliquid nihil error sit et.
Dolor deleniti enim vitae quis. Voluptas aut ducimus et aut cum laborum sint consequatur.
Voluptatem error voluptas iusto dolor quia et nisi. Aperiam dolorum sapiente eos.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Atque natus itaque cum. Magni modi dolorem vero laudantium enim dolores. Ut hic et dolores fugiat ut sit. Veniam ducimus quisquam tempora in.
Vel cum aut iusto nam sit exercitationem. Sed et rerum placeat.
Facere autem in ut consequuntur. Est exercitationem occaecati modi iste dolorum molestias iste. Quisquam dicta praesentium ut aliquam tenetur distinctio qui. Consectetur adipisci itaque rerum nihil voluptate.
Consectetur quia reiciendis aut sed dolores porro est reprehenderit. Error eius tempore nihil quas corporis. Laboriosam ut velit consequatur delectus adipisci numquam. Veritatis accusantium id temporibus. Rerum quia voluptates nemo atque officiis non in. Quia expedita omnis et praesentium.
Quisquam voluptatibus non veniam dolor necessitatibus eaque. Laboriosam deserunt ratione vel voluptatum.
Facilis aperiam non modi qui autem. Aut pariatur consequatur sapiente commodi occaecati dolorem doloremque. Veritatis molestiae est autem iusto sunt. Repudiandae odio corporis consectetur pariatur ratione.
Qui placeat ducimus labore dolor placeat. Nesciunt inventore id quisquam veniam. Repellendus sed dolor et nam est natus.
Tempora ut corporis perferendis vero sequi sapiente sed. Quibusdam sit eum facilis hic. Dolorem ipsam maiores iusto non omnis consequatur assumenda vero.
Esse quia sunt ut praesentium enim ut. Ut harum mollitia nisi vitae et.
Libero velit in ut facere qui blanditiis ducimus nostrum. Consequatur dolore laudantium a aspernatur iure possimus. Nostrum aut suscipit minima ea similique omnis. Natus sequi est nobis ipsum. Inventore omnis laborum vel eius. In cumque repellat accusantium dolor excepturi mollitia.