What the hell HR!

James

Don't despair - I've been there too. I made a move from a trainer and went and did my DPM in my 40's. I too couldn't get a job, and at one IPD affair I was politely told that at my age!!! I would not get one either. Indeed I was later turned down by my own county council, and this caused me a huge amount of anger as the person who interviewed me later told one of her fellow employees that she didn't want someone who had more qualifications and someone who was older than her, reporting to her.

Now there's two sides to this. Skill, Understanding & Ability is one and on the other side, the ability to persuade someone that you are the sort of person they will employ.

In spite of all the talk about 'competency' interviewing and so on, the most important skill is the latter, the soft skill of saying exactly the right thing, in exactly the right tone at exactly the right time. And that's got little or nothing to do with hard skills!. Now I'm not suggesting you are in anyway lacking any particular skill, but from my own experience following my being told I won't get a job, it simply made me determined to continue knocking on doors. And from experience if you knock on enough doors one will open and the person who thinks you are just what they want - and you are in!!

I'm crap at being interviewed by the way. But I also won't give up and blame it on other people all the time. Ultimately you cannot change other people - only yourself!  So don't despair - just keep knocking on doors and perhaps get some feedback on your performance when being interviewed. All job searches start with knocking on doors and most end up with just the one opening - and thats the very last door you knock on.

Good l;uck!

In addition to the issues identified by colleagues above, I think you, like many other people with aspirations to progress in HR, are running into the two underlying problems that can make getting one's first established position difficult. These are nothing to do with "blacklists" so forget the conspiracy theories; they are not due to flaws in the educational system's methods of comparing dissimilar forms of skill, knowledge and competence, and most particularly they are not a flaw within our profession toward which the comment: "What the hell? is either appropriate or justified.

HR, like any other business function, is expected to be both effective and cost efficient. In addition, not being a regulated profession means that Company SMTs can choose/impose their own standards on the HR provision they want (or think they want).

In simple terms that means that no company is going to take on someone who is (in their opinion) overqualified for a role because either a) That person is somehow "flawed" in their competence so unable to get roles at the levels they seem to be suited for; b) They are looking for a short-time L3-5 "roost" while they look for something more to their liking, or c) They want to get their feet under the desk and then demand more money/a more senior position; including possibly that of the person doing the recruiting! (A potential also noted by David, above). So your L7 application goes in the bin.

Equally, because there is no formally regulated "structure" to the professional competence "required" to take HR roles of a given level , or in organisations of a given size, many organisations will still appoint "HR" applicants with no qualifications at all, or side-step someone from finance or an administrative clerical role (or maybe the guy sweeping the car-park) to "run HR". There is nothing stopping them, any more than there is anything stopping those with no practical employee-relations experience whatsoever walking out of Uni' today, shiny new L6-7 or equivalent in their hand, and setting up tomorrow as an "HR Consultant". (Read these very pages for some examples).

(That "side-stepping" tendency also explaining how people taking on a sales or finance job get "promoted" into HR.... Nor because they're qualified for the role, but perhaps because they're not very good at selling or counting beans!).

HR, well practiced, is not evaluated in terms of academic knowledge or qualification, but in Competence: The balance of both K&U and interpersonal experience relevant to the workplace (but not necessarily only from HR roles) that enables the interactions between issues such as Employment law, company policy, Equality, H&S, and all the rest to be created and utilised flexibly, sometimes sensitively, sometimes firmly, to interface the Company's objectives with those strange and unpredictable beings called "people" (Including ourselves) who it needs to achieve them.

So your problem is not anyone giving the recruiting manger a black-ball or nudge-nudge to say "not him", nor is it the Profession, Hell-worthy or not, it is far more likely to be that you are not tailoring your applications to the roles you are applying for, but rather seeking to promote your superiority of skills above other applicants instead. (Often a very different presentation). So the employer sees your qualifications and (assumes) they do not fit the job they want done; or sees your apparent lack of HR "hands on" experiences as limiting to what they need; In the same way that they would not buy a Rolls Royce as a delivery-van, or buy a tatty-Transit for the MD to use as their personal transport.

...to Hell or anywhere else.

P