HR is a gatekeeper withholding or providing access to companies’ potential employers. Whether one is an internal job seeker or an external one, access to the hiring manager is often THRU HR.

HR is often “the bad guy” enforcing performance discipline, forcing managers to pick between two qualified employees who BOTH should get a raise but there’s only enough money for one them to do so, enforcing laws, discrimination and harassment policies, etc.

Then we forget about the times that they helped write job descriptions, knew where to publish our new job postings, handled thousands of incoming applications, managed the very detailed work of setting up and executing candidate interviews with travel and reimbursements, got us the promotion we wanted, helped us deal with a difficult employee or managers…. etc, etc.

It’s not a field for the faint-hearted.