But as you mention, if developers were to handle everything related to hiring, firing, sick reports, vacation, benefits, contracts, compliance etc. that HR does, I doubt there would be any profit.
What the HR person would know is how the person appears socially and how he manages to present himself.
The company should make sure the HR person isn't the only one deciding if somebody gets hired or not, because the HR person simply does not possess the tools needed to get the best man for the job by himself.
True story: I got an ad for a consulting position for "Postgre"
The description had as a listed skill:
"PostgreSQL USE GOOGLE TO VERIFY SPELLING"
That's a bad sign there.
It's easy to bash HR people just as "regular" employees often bash IT ("They won't provide that simple feature that I've been asking for ever since, just because they hate me."). But calling the role "broken" does not magically make it disappear. Someone needs to handle the employer/employee relationship and all attached nuisances - any organisation with employees that does not handle this role is more broken than any HR department I've ever seen.
I'd really hope that we'd be over this and appreciate that other people in our organisation provide value and experience that we maybe can't see at fist glance. Instead we close our eyes and call their role "broken".
That's only true if the people defining the mission of various departments -- i.e., executive management -- is not competent at their job.
Reforming or eliminating HR will not fix that problem.
That depends. Are they staffed by psychologists? If yes, then no. Psychology and psychological testing are losing credibility very rapidly right now:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-...
Unfortunately, they're overwhelmed by the majority, which are full of pseudoscience.
Maybe the more rigorous ones should change their titles, not to be associated with standard "psychologists" anymore?
In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:
1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,
2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregarded.
Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions. All fields have different branches and disagreements. True some fields like psychology have a harder time producing great professionals, in my assesment. I think it's because of it being a young field and it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.
I don't know if you meant by including that link that psychologists criticising psychiatrists undermines their credibility, but if that's the case I disagree strongly.
