What's Wrong with HR ... or How Not to Hire Michael Jordan

Dr. John Sullivan

If HR ran the "Bulls" (sports team):

1. We would turn Michael Jordan away as an applicant because:

He hadn't finished his degree.
His grades were bad.
We didn't have an open requisition and…and besides we already had a guard on the team.
If we had a hiring freeze…we would turn him away.
His resume had a spelling error.
He wore an earring to the interview

2. Even though we paid him $35 million…we would still offer him our Kaiser HMO and force him to fill out the forms on the first day.

3. If he won the most valuable player award…we would limit his raise to 5% due to "equity" issues or a limited merit increase budget.

4. We would interview him…but not put him "on the court" for a tryout.

5. If he quit to play baseball…we wouldn't rehire him because we have a policy against it and besides he had a bad reference (from the baseball team).

6. We would improve the team after he left…by "cutting the cost of the next hire."

7. We would force him to retire…because he insisted on having "Phil Jackson" as his coach.

8. We wouldn't let him wear his Air Jordan shoes because… they were not "standard issue" and besides his relationship with Nike was moonlighting and a conflict of interest.

9. It would take us 90 days to make a hiring decision. If he asked how long it might take…we would say we didn't know and "don't call us, we'll call you"!

10. During the interview we would ask him about "his strengths and weaknesses"…and we would actually make note of what he told us his weaknesses were for the file.

11. We wouldn't release him to play in the Olympics because… that would create equity issues and it was against policy.

12. If he came from a non-US team we would reject him to save relocation costs (if his resume wasn't in English it would be "filed")

13. If he WOW'ed us in the interview…we would still want to bring in two other candidates for comparison purposes.

14. He would be counted as a single "headcount", the same as any other player.

15. If he said he was quitting…we would not counter offer him because it was against policy.

16. When he left…he would be counted as a single turnover…even though he was a star performer (or if he went to a direct competitor).

17. We would spend more time with Dennis Rodman…because HR always spends it's time on the "problem" employees and never focuses on "the non-squeaking wheel."

Dr. John Sullivan is the CTO for Agilent Technologies and is on leave as Head and Professor of Human Resource Management College of Business, San Francisco State University. He is a well-known international speaker, author and advisor to Fortune 500 and Silicon Valley firms. He specializes in making HR "THE" competitive advantage. He is also head of the HR Strategic Forecasting Project, whose goal is to forecast and anticipate HR issues and opportunities.