Blog Post 4

Last week I learned a lot about the hiring process. I graduate in December and will be looking for a job so I have been very interested in how companies go about choosing employees. I began my interviews for the first assignment. I interviewed the HR guy at a local large construction company. I won’t name names because this will be available on the web and there might be some confidentiality issues. He gave me a lot of good information about how companies hire but was new to the company. Since I only need to use two interviews and I have interviewed more people than that I don’t think I will use his interview for the assignment. He said that they usually hire people based off of referrals. If they need to hire somebody they have the project managers and superintendents ask around and see who they can get. They will then have interviews with the perspective employee. They usually have one of the managers sit in on the interview to judge the persons technical skills. They also usually will run a background check on the person. They have a problem with affirmative action and hiring minorities for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because most of the employees come from referrals and people refer people like themselves they don’t get a whole lot of diversity in potential hires. Also, not many women apply for jobs in the construction industry just because of the nature of the work. He is working on getting an application tracking system on the website because he thinks it will help bring in more diverse applicants. Something else he said that was interesting was his response to what he looks for on a resume. He said that he looks for what is on top because that is probably what the applicant feels is the most important. The interviews that I have conducted have been interesting and I feel like they will give me an advantage when looking for a job.
My discussion topic for chapter six had to do with the tests that are often administered to potential hires. I have taken a few of them and found them to be rather ridiculous. One I took at Home Depot asked me hundreds of questions about honesty. It was obvious about which answer should be put down but I wouldn’t have been dishonest if I answered them all in the way it wanted me to. This makes it an interesting test. In theory the more honest the person, the lower they would score on the test. If I were in charge of hiring somebody I don’t think I would use those types of tests.
The discussion topic I chose for chapter seven had to do with diversity training. I have never received training in that area and I found it interesting. I wonder how somebody becomes qualified to teach and train about diversity. I feel like it would have to be somebody of the culture being learned about to be effective.