(1634) Been gathering movies and shorts for a few days. It takes time to sort through … there are many obstacles now, often maniacal ones.

ddddd

14. Steve

Rupert Lowe and Eva Vlaar: A bold vision to Restore Britain and Save Europe:

13. Greedy eyes, eyeing your home

That does seem the type of thing they’re trying on over here. Do you have any spare rooms you don’t really need? Fit three or four guests in there, govt can.

12. Thought this an excellent piece of advice I should take onboard

11. This one’s from Quora

… remembering it’s the US workplace, though I’ve seen examples in the UK during a brief spell of jobhunting (between positions let’s say a couple of decades back). The account below is quite jaundiced but I’m thinking not without reason … it’s about HR.

Going back many decades, apart from long periods of self-employment … when I was actually looking, it was usual to go through a known agency in the field who interviewed us and decided where we best fitted what had come in. HR as a department was not around yet afa I know.

The question was “What makes HR instantly reject a candidate after an interview?”

Assuming here that the CV-resume, qualifications, personability, attire, manner, age … all that stands up … what is it at the interview, other than these, which is an immediate dealbreaker? One chap replied thus:

“The reason: HR people — the single most incompetent members of any firm or university — don’t like to be confronted with the truth. They make a point of confronting candidates with the many (arguable) mistakes the candidates come in with, but HR people never doubt their own magical analyzing powers over others — even if their own meager CV says otherwise.

Time and again, I’ver learned that HR people are in a committee to make candidates suffer — or at least, to show how much power they have (even though they lack the expertise).

• THE DON’Ts: never claim, in your two-yearly HR follow-up, that you are doing great, and that nothing’s going wrong whatsoever: the HR person will put you to the sword, because you dared to feel fine about yourself. HR people — they come from social sciences, so what did you expect ? — will show you that this very evaluation is not about feeling fine. You have mistakes, you made them, and you will admit to them (even if none of them are true).
• THE DOs: my own approach is very simple. I enter the room knowing very well what is good and what might not be good about me, and even if everything is perfect, I start — I do not wait: I START — listing all my shortcomings and mistakes, even if nothing in it is true. Next, I summarize my action plan to work on my many mistakes. (On the way, I mention some of my plus points.)

The HR person wants to jump me (but doesn’t just yet), because she thinks that vulnerable people are great, and confident people are bad. That’s what she learned, and still believes. (It’s social sciences after all.)

She has no idea I am playing her, because the HR philosophy does not allow for an extra layer of depth. It always works because she doesn’t understand the very mechanism in which she fails time and again.

So to be very honest, I think your question does not have any merit: the HR department is not capable to evaluate candidates, unless it boils down to ticking off simple boxes that any other member of the company should be able to do as well. With less fuss, of course —

And much more competence.”

Right … I remember being sent to an office in a nearby city worked by one HR woman and she was quite personable to be honest. We had the interview, she even asked if I had any more questions, don’t hesitate … she seemed fine. Silly me, I did have one, seconds after departing, knocked again, she came to the door and literally demanded: “What do you want?” That’s true. Her attitude had totally altered to savage. I excused myself and went.

It was the sudden change which got me, like two different people. I’m wondering what’s the best way to describe the type … I think a “Joyce Thacker” or “Anneliese Dodds” … actually, any female Labour MP would do. Very bad news, incompetent and one thing they always do is say (if with a firm) something like: “I’ve been in coding now for eighteen years,” or similar. No she has not … she’s been in HR since her waitressing or bartending.

Think I dodged a few bullets, the way things went in my working life … I can imagine her saying sorry, no can do, so that I can do the John Cleese thing … “Yes, well that’s the kind of blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage …” and so on. Never had the chance. Best I could get was, “There’s a lot of hate in you, James,” from a psychology teacher who got Fromm wrong, easy slip to make. I understand she stormed into the staffroom cursing after that session. There we go. The AV man told me next day they were creasing themselves. Still, not good on my part … sorry me.