Is Aaron Cleary Writing for Forbes Now?

Not really; he linked the article on his blog, and it sounds like what he's been saying for years. Forbes asks "Is it time for companies to fire their Human Resources Departments?"

I'm convinced HR would NEVER exist in the wild. The only reason it has proliferated to this day is due to laws, regulations, and a fear of lawsuits. Forbes documents what most of us already know: HR is mostly a useless roadblock to a company functioning.

Are you an attractive woman? Good luck getting a job with one of these HR departments, and not for the reasons you think:

The economists hadn’t reckoned on the fact that 93 percent of the HR staffers deciding whether to call in someone for an interview were female. It turns out that HR women (who also tend to be young and single and hence still in the dating market for men) are eager to meet with handsome men. But they’re jealous of beautiful women. So your business is losing out on talented people (and wasting time with untalented ones) based on their looks.

 I've seen some collosal HR cluster***ks. When I was at Lockheed Martin, HR hired a Windows NT administrator for a Unix Administrator position. The hiring manager was also at fault because he didn't have a clue that NT and Unix are not the same thing. The guy's resume said "Administrator" and he did well in the interview. The Unix guys were not invited to participate in the hiring process. This guy ended up sitting in a chair against the wall. Yeah, he was old and couldn't adapt to change, like trying to learn a new system.

I once got hired for a job because I had an acronym on my resume that matched an acronym they were looking for but wasn't the same thing. I came on board and learned the new system anyway, but that's just me.

Forbes closes its article with this quote:

Fortunately, business is moving the other way, to reduce HR departments by outsourcing its paper-pushing functions; PriceWaterhouseCoopers, for instance, estimates it can shave 15 to 25 percent off your HR costs. These humans are simply not resourceful enough. We should be glad HR is going the way of acid-wash jeans.

I'll be glad to see HR go away.