Not everyone in HR belongs in HR. We're supposed to be the ones who listen.
I've been in HR and Marketing for years, mostly as a generalist, so I've handled almost every facet of this job. And after all this time, one thing still gets to me: how many HR professionals carry this air about them.
You see it in interviews, at conferences, in trainings. There's an energy like they've already decided they're above the room. And when you ask around, the reasoning is always the same: they're licensed, they have the SHRP, they have a master's. Fine. Congratulations. But that should never be the sole definition of your caliber. A certificate tells me you passed something. It doesn't tell me you can handle a hard conversation, take correction, or sit with the possibility that you're not ready for a role yet.
Recent example. I interviewed someone for a senior position. She was clearly short on experience for the scope. I didn't say it outright — but based on how much she struggled with my questions, I think she realized it herself. And it showed. It was a video interview, so I saw everything. She rolled her eyes. On camera. During an interview. For a senior HR role.
And all I could think was: if you can't sit with that, this is the wrong industry for you. Listening is the job. We're the ones who take the complaints, deliver the bad news, and sit in the conversations nobody else wants to be in. If you can't hear that something is missing in you, how are you supposed to give feedback to anyone else?
To be clear, this isn't all of HR. I know people in this field with no credentials to show off who are the first to run when an employee is in trouble. Those are the ones who are HR by heart.
The problem is the other group. The ones who are here for the prestige of the title, the privileges, the access to information, the feeling of being the person who knows things. Not the actual work. And they're the reason our whole industry keeps getting dragged online.
So a real question for the HR people here: have you seen this too? And how do we actually develop people who don't turn out this way? Because gatekeeping by credentials clearly isn't working.