Greetings from Human Resources!

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Hello! I see a lot of interest in interviews here and in chat! I work in the human resources (HR) department and would like to offer answers to questions you may have. What I mostly do is keep our information system groomed and fed, but because of that I get to see every area of HR in action. Does anyone have questions about hiring, interviews, discrimination, or other such things? I would be most pleased to give you the inside scoop on anything you'd like.

Before I go into any depths; what positions do you employ people for?

I work at a research laboratory. Our "product" is science, so we of course hire tons of scientists and engineers. However, we still have all the normal support functions that any business who employs a few thousand people has - finance and accounting, all kinds of administrators, some executive assistants, all manner of human resources people, janitors, maintenance workers, teamsters, public relations people, a whole bunch of information technology staff (IT/tech support/system architecture/cybersecurity). We do not have any traditional sales or customer service type folks, though.

How much influence does HR exert over who gets hired, relative to employees (including supervisors) who work in the department with the open position?

Does the hiring process include any type of personality testing?

Do you think there is any hiring bias in favor of any personality traits that aren't directly related to performance of job duties?

How much influence does HR have in who gets hired -

Some, but it really depends on how involved the manager is in the hiring process. HR does the initial weeding out of applicants who aren't a good fit - we check resumes to see if they have the minimum qualifications. If there a large number of applicants, we will also go through and find resumes who have preferred qualifications in addition to the minimums. This is more of a mechanical thing than a judgment call though, either they mention they have 2 or more years experience fixing cranes, or they don't.

Does the hiring process include any type of personality testing? -

Nope. I know that does occur at some companies though.

Is there bias in favor of any personality traits that don't influence performance?

Yes (nobody's entirely objective), but far less than you might expect. You might think that technical ability/experience are the number one thing recruiters should look for, but this is only the case in very highly technical jobs. Personality is more important than technical ability when hiring for most jobs, and this is a pretty well established and accepted thing in HR circles in the USA, probably elsewhere too.

This isn't just some "tyranny of the NTs" type of thing either, personality really is more important in most cases. Why? Because you can teach somebody to set up meetings in Microsoft Outlook or clean floors or fix computers or process payroll, but you can't teach a lazy person to be hardworking or an angry and unkind person to be a good team player.

That goes without saying, considering that most jobs don't require much technical expertise.


This seems a random thing to say. I'll just say that this comment, coupled with the randomness of this thread, and the fact that you've been a relatively inactive member could inspire the impression that you started this thread because you've an axe to grind.

....huh? An axe to grind? I'm not even sure who you think I'm trying to pick a fight with. No, I can assure you that it was not my intention to spend the day arguing with people on the internet. I mentioned the whole technical skill vs. personality thing because it took me a while to figure that out, so I figured it might not be obvious to everyone.

Okay. So how do you determine who possess the skills necessary to work the engineering positions?

Some software development companies has testing procedures that strongly favors the people who can solve problems on the spot while being watched. I feel that rules out a lot of highly skilled people. What's your take on this?

How does my company determine who possesses the necessary skills to be engineers? It's up to the hiring manager ultimately (not somebody in HR, the hiring manager is the future boss of whoever gets this position). Previous experience is probably the most influential attribute of a candidate during the hiring process. For technical positions like engineers, technical ability has higher than average weight. This includes general experience and also specific skills relevant to the job.

Interns are a little different, though. If an intern really knocks his or her assignments out of the park, they have a good shot at getting hired to permanent positions applied to even if they don't have the most experience.

What's my take on on-the-spot tests? They are a good tool when used appropriately, but it is easy to use them the wrong way and employers can easily infer too much from them. The main snag is that the conditions of the test should closely match the working conditions of the job.

I had not heard about the tests for software development companies that you described, so I looked into it a bit. I'm not an expert in software development so take my opinion with a grain of salt. It really sounds like some companies are misusing these tests pretty badly. Putting somebody in a room with a bunch of interviewers and making them write complex code would measure a very specific set of skills, skills that are probably not a great match for the skills actually needed to be successful on the job.

I was a hiring manager in the Technical Publications department of a software development company. I hired technical writers and I had one programmer position, so I had a programmer work for just me and then I had some other ones on loan from other departments.

I worked closely with HR in my company, partially because I had (HAD) a friend in that department. The answers the OP is giving are correct.

We mid-level managers and the big time managers above us (above them was the CEO) evaded HR if there was a particular person we wanted to hire or if there was a problem we wanted to handle internally (most problems). We brought in HR if we thought we might get in trouble for something or if we had too many things to look at (resumes, training for employees sometimes).

There were personality tests for my company. Thank goodness they weren't in action when I was promoted or I probably wouldn't have been. My first test indicated deception and my second indicated strong outlier traits that were only present in one other person in the company- the CEO. People pretended that we didn't use those personality tests to hire or manage people, but we did. They helped to put teams together more effectively and to keep people out of the company who wouldn't have wanted to be there. For example, I wasn't a good fit for that company because I'm too different from everyone else there. And yes, if you're wondering, there was an aspie type personality but it wasn't called that. It was something like a knowledge specialist. I forget exactly. But we'd have one or two on every team. One social person, one person who takes charge.

Here are my questions for the OP:

Q1: What happens if a bully type is reported to HR? And then what happens if a second or third person report the same problem?

Q2: Can a person request simple accommodations without disclosing autism? Such as asking for communication to be backed up in writing, having a quiet place to work, taking a larger load of technical work in exchange for being excused from social responsibilties?

Q3: Is there a way to ask for a promotion to a position that doesn't exist? For example, if the position above you deals only with people, could you get a new job title and adjusted salary in exchange for increased technical responsibilities?

A1, reporting a bully: Reports of a bullying coworker will usually lead to an investigation of some kind, at least if the HR department is any good. The more people who report the bullying behavior, the more likely an investigation will be performed and the more likely it is that some kind of discipline or remediation will result.

A2, request accommodations without disclosing a disability: Unfortunately the weight of the law is only behind employees who disclose their disabilities. Without disclosing autism, the decision to grant accommodations is ultimately up to your manager. I don't know how your company is set up, but usually there is an employee titled "HR Generalist" or "HR Manager" who serves as the point person for employee concerns. This person may be able to help you approach the topic with your manager.

A3: asking for a promotion to a position that doesn't exist: This depends on your company policies and culture and such. In general, though, I imagine such a change would be more likely to be more of a job shift rather than an outright promotion - promotions typically come with more social responsibility. The good news is that I see these kinds of transfers happen pretty regularly.

I honestly think Nathaniel will be an excellent resource for us Aspergian/Autistics seeking to be hired.

Especially in the engineering/technical fields.

Are you involved in determining who is to be interviewed when seeking "support"/clerical staff?

I'm a "support staff" person.

I hope you will become a useful resource for people who really want to get a job and be independent. As far as I know, we've never had an actual personnel/human resources type person here.

No matter how society "screws" us, we do have to become members of the economy where we live.

Hi. An idea to update your original post if possible, or to make clarification. Are you private sector, medium enterprise, and in America? Each employer may have its quirks, but generally employment cultures (I find) can be defined in terms of what I listed.

For example, the bullying question. Any and every report of friction between anyone in the organisation begins the very formal, 3-stage grievance procedure (provided local resolution was attempted first). This ends in the case being thrown out (false accusation, etc), resolution, relocation, or dismissal. Of course, there is an official appeals process.

As for the promotion to a job that doesn't exist, that's happened many times, but no one ever calls it that. You put in a business case for a higher grade resource, then design the job role for the specific person (oh no, we'd never do this, it's just the skills we need happen to be the skills person X has), then have a 2 week (which is the minimum allowed) internal recruitment.

I did my time in HR, I've paid my dues (3 years, a hundred years), but probably in quite a different culture to you.

I will certainly try to make myself useful! To answer your question - no, I work with the system HR uses. I don't actually get involved in the hiring process directly at all, though I've created a tool which will let us look at the applicant flow process from different angles.

Before I came to this company, though, I was in recruiting. I would often do the initial screening of resumes, and probably a quarter or a third of the resumes I screened were for clerical positions. Clerical positions openings were in a league of their own - we would get hundreds of applications for every single opening.

Excellent question, that bit of context matters a lot. Is it possible to edit posts on this forum? If not, I suppose I'd say that my company fits into these categories -

Research & Development
USA based
Medium
Large
Nonprofit
Government
Privately Owned

I'm sure that the astute people on this forum notice that the list above seems to contradict itself! Let me explain. My company is in a bit of a weird spot - we are a medium-sized branch of a large company, and we're given a lot of autonomy from HQ. We're part of the largest nonprofit research group in the world, the Battelle Memorial Institute.

We end up generating something that looks like profit at my lab, but that money either goes to 1)support operations on HQ's end, 2)funding independent research at the lab, or 3)donated to local charities, schools, and the like. (This is the reason why I chose to go all-in and commit to working here for a long time, by the way - instead of the ultimate objective of making shareholders rich, our ultimate objective is to make the world a better place through science). We're not actually government operated but I'd guess that perhaps 85% of our funding comes through various branches of the government. Because of this, there is a lot of oversite.

So my company is a strange blend of several traits that you wouldn't usually see together.