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Stupid HR Tricks

By Art van Bodegraven | 12/31/2017 | 10:00 AM

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

Borrowing liberally from now-retired Dave Letterman, we've translated people tricks into pet tricks, and then into organizational tricks.  Trust me, HR has many tricks, most leftover from another century, as reported a year or so ago by Forbes Daily.

As we prepare for New Years' Resolutions,  it's an excellent time to review how out of touch HR has become.  HR has fallen into the trap of  asking really dumb questions in the guise of probing for weakness and uncovering substandard responses.

The wary candidate can stay out of the traps with a progression of answers that: (1 display mastery; 2) indicate standard responses; or 3) are proforma. He or she simply needs to stay away from the truly simple trap questions.

Here are the traps, cleverly masked as deep space probes.

What's your greatest weakness?  

Why should we hire you from among our deep, rich talent pool?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

If you were: choose one, a tree, an animal, a film or TV show, a soup flavor, which would you be - and why?

How badly do you want the job?

The responses are categorized as low-mojo, medium-mojo, and high-mojo.

Desired responses in weakness are: too hard on myself (and sometimes others).  A spaghetti-legged answer would center on self and the importance of work/life balance.  A great response would be getting better at things already done better than most, and concentrating on the things I'm meant to be doing.  Whats your take?

Why should we hire you has a weak response - I'm a hard worker, and I really want the job - an air of desperation.  The medium-warm answer focuses in the quality of match with functional needs.  The breath of fresh air response is; maybe there's someone better, but I know I can do this.  If I'm the right person, we'll both know it.

In five years?  The tepid response is: maybe taking your job, ha-ha.  The unimaginative medium answer is: I like Finance; maybe I'll stay there for another five years of experience.  The hot answer is: Who can tell?  We live in a world of constant change.  But, I'm sure I'll be working with really smart people on a really big project that makes a difference for an enterprise.

If you were . . . All answers are losers.  Give the one (s) you care about, the persuade HR to jettison the lot of them.

How badly?  Desperation kicks in the door and kicks out the low-mojo respondent.  The medium answer relates to functionality, which only HR cares about and puts VPs to sleep.  The high-mojo response, and candidate, responds with: You know I'm interested because I'm here.  And, I've got a lot of questions. Is this a good time to take a deeper dive into them?

For 2018, make these your resolutions.  Craft strong high-mojo messages to stupid questions; dump the sad responses - and go get 'em!

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About Art van Bodegraven

Art van Bodegraven

Art van Bodegraven (1939 - 2017) was Managing Principal of the van Bodegraven Associates consultancy and Founding Principal of Discovery Executive Services, which develops and delivers supply chain educational programs. He was formerly Chair of the Supply Chain Group AG, Partner at The Progress Group LLC, Development Executive at CSCMP, Practice Leader with S4 Consulting, and a Managing Director in Coopers & Lybrand's consulting practice. Concentrating in supply chain management and logistics for over 20 years in his 50+ year business career, he has led ground-breaking strategic, operational, and educational projects for leading US and global clients. Art was principal co-author of DC Velocity's Basic Training monthly column for a decade, and was the principal co-author, with Ken Ackerman, of Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management, the definitive primer in the field. His popular blog, The Art of Art, has been a staple of DC Velocity's web site since its inception.



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