I attended the wedding of my sister-in-law a few months ago. Besides attending the festivities, I got to hang out with my wife’s extended family, a family of doctors and educators. This was memorable experience on two accounts. First, this was the first wedding I ever attended where no fights broke out. Second, and more importantly, this was the first time I found myself surrounded by this many medical professionals. I am able to hold decent conversations about variety of topics but that week most of the conversations around me were going way above my head. In the midst of all the technical discussions, I came across something that really struck me. Something that mapped well to my profession and something I’ve been doing without realizing it.

At one of the tea gatherings, I asked the group if they ever had to play the “patient” and how they felt about doing it after playing the role of “doctor” for so long. They all had interesting stories to tell from variety of experiences. But the consensus was that doctors are the worst patients – not because they have low tolerance for pain or medical procedures but because they are close to these procedures. They can handle the needle but they can’t deal with someone stabbing them with it due to their incompetency or carelessness. I’m not sure what this condition is called when you closely scrutinize someone doing what you do for living but I realized I’m certainly suffering from it.

Many things make me cringe in my profession. We, the HR, are so proud to have come up with the notion of behavioral interviews because they are claimed to be better predictor of future performance by 60-70 per cent (one organization even claimed up to 90 per cent). Yet, there’s no research to back these claims up. In fact, I came across a research demonstrating quite the contrary. We, the HR, love putting fancy value statements on our corporate office entrances but in reality reward popularity contest winners and the behaviors of corporate ass kissing. We, the HR, proudly pigeonhole our employees into 9 boxes because we believe this is the best thing we created for managing performance of our great workforce. Yet, we fight tooth and nail to keep 13th percent out of box number 9 (regardless of their performance) because “the policy” says only 12 per cent are allowed in this box.

I have a reliable car now but one of my old cars had a lot of problems and breakdowns. I’d generally have to go to a different mechanic for service every time. First thing the mechanic would tell me that how terrible a job the previous mechanic did on my car. My wife (who is a dentist by education) thinks the dentist who performed RTC on her most likely slept through her tooth drilling class. Someone like me who doesn’t know anything about the art of dentistry or fixing cars wouldn’t have spotted any of that. But after going through some job interviews in my life I can certainly nominate a few interviewers for next episode of Jenny Jones’s “HR Boys and Girls Getting Interview Makeover” show.

So, what is your profession? Have you had to get the service you provide for living? What was your experience? Does this condition (I call it “We, the HR” syndrome, for lack of better term) exist across the board? And someone please tell me if this condition has a name. Curiosity is killing me!

I attended the wedding of my sister-in-law a few months ago. Besides attending the festivities, I got to hang out with my wife’s extended family, a family of doctors and educators. This was memorable experience on two accounts. First, this was the first wedding I ever attended where no fights broke out. Second, and more importantly, this was the first time I found myself surrounded by this many medical professionals. I am able to hold decent conversations about variety of topics but that week most of the conversations around me were going way above my head. In the midst of all the technical discussions, I came across something that really struck me. Something that mapped well to my profession and something I’ve been doing without realizing it. At one of the tea gatherings, I asked the group if they ever had to play the “patient” and how they felt about doing it after playing the role of “doctor” for so long. They all had interesting stories to tell from variety of experiences. But the consensus was that doctors are the worst patients – not because they have low tolerance for pain or medical procedures but because they are close to these procedures. They can handle the needle but they can’t deal with someone stabbing them with it due to their incompetency or carelessness. I’m not sure what this condition is called when you closely scrutinize someone doing what you do for living but I realized I’m certainly suffering from it. Many things make me cringe in my profession. We, the HR, are so proud to have come up with the notion of behavioral interviews because they are claimed to be better predictor of future performance by 60-70 per cent (one organization even claimed up to 90 per cent). Yet, there’s no research to back these claims up. In fact, I came across a research demonstrating quite the contrary. We, the HR, love putting fancy value statements on our corporate office entrances but in reality reward popularity contest winners and the behaviors of corporate ass kissing. We, the HR, proudly pigeonhole our employees into 9 boxes because we believe this is the best thing we created for managing performance of our great workforce. Yet, we fight tooth and nail to keep 13th percent out of box number 9 (regardless of their performance) because “the policy” says only 12 per cent are allowed in this box. I have a reliable car now but one of my old cars had a lot of problems and breakdowns. I’d generally have to go to a different mechanic for service every time. First thing the mechanic would tell me that how terrible a job the previous mechanic did on my car. My wife (who is a dentist by education) thinks the dentist who performed RTC on her most likely slept through her tooth drilling class. Someone like me who doesn’t know anything about the art of dentistry or fixing cars wouldn’t have spotted any of that. But after going through some job interviews in my life I can certainly nominate a few interviewers for next episode of Jenny Jones’s “HR Boys and Girls Getting Interview Makeover” show. So, what is your profession? Have you had to get the service you provide for living? What was your experience? Does this condition (I call it “We, the HR” syndrome, for lack of better term) exist across the board? And someone please tell me if this condition has a name. Curiosity is killing me!