Yes, We Can

The other day, my blog entry was about how poorly we tend to treat applicants.  The response to it probably echoes what most of the HR community believes – that because of the volume of applicants, we can’t respond to all of them the way that I was proposing (treating them like they were our customers).

Concurrently, I continue to submit my book, “The Way” (actually 15 ways on how HR pros can become mainstream in their organizations) to publishers.  Each submittal is frustrating since each one has their own detailed process, so consequently the would-be author spends time, money and effort to send in a proposal and manuscript.  Sometimes there is a response in the form of a reject letter or none at all.  Most of them do not return manuscripts.

I would imagine that authors and applicants share similar frustrations.

Well, lo and behold, one editor actually emailed me a friendly message and has since offered me advice and help on my book and has reviewed another manuscript of mine and done the same.  I let him know that I thought that he was one of kind and how much I appreciated his help.  His follow-up email to me stated that his living depends on authors and, therefore, he treated them like his customers and that, yes, he had to spend much more time communicating to his “customers” than the average editor, but he said that it was important to live up to his ideals or he shouldn’t be in his profession.

How refreshing.  I was jubilant even though he still didn’t accept both manuscripts.  I would recommend him and his publishing firm to anyone.

I would think that we would prefer to be like this new editor friend of mine.  I think that most people going into Human Resources from the get-go have ideals like my editor, but compromises are made along the way.  I still don’t think that it has to be this way.  I firmly believe we can put the “human” back in Human Resources and work to humanize the process.

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