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An Experience at a Job Fair 

A couple of years ago, when I was just finishing my PhD, I attended a job fair, since I knew that sometime soon I would have to get a real job. It was a pretty large job fair in one of the region’s major cities, and the experience I had there became an anecdote that I’ve shared many times since. Here’s what happened. 

I went to the first booth that was of interest to me. I was a young engineer with decent grades, an engineering diploma from Germany, a master’s degree from the United States, and (soon) a PhD from Norway. So I had international experience, I spoke English, I had two degrees, and I was interested in automotive and logistics, or preferably a combination of the two. So I went to the booth of one of the large automotive suppliers in the region. 

I talked to the lady at the booth, expressed my interest in the company (which was sincere) and asked her what kind of positions they were currently offering. I introduced myself and provided a bit of background and context. 

She asked me, “So, what did you get your PhD in?” 

And I said, “Well, technically it’s in offshore technology, but I’m really working on bottlenecks in supply networks.” 

She looked at me, appeared a bit confused, and started flipping through the pages of the folder she had brought to the booth, which contained all their job openings. She couldn’t find “PhD in offshore technology” or “bottlenecks in supply networks” in the descriptions or requirements of any of the positions. 

So then she asked me, “What did you get your master’s degree in?” And I replied that  I’ve got a master’s in engineering management. 

She started looking for a job that required a master’s in engineering management. Seeing how she was flipping through the pages, looking for this exact term, I told her, “Well, you know, it’s a degree from the United States. I don’t think we have that in Germany.” 

She said, “Ah, okay.” 

And I said, “Well, I also have a degree in Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen, with a focus on logistics,” which in English loosely translates into business and engineering, a degree combining engineering and business education. 

So she started looking for this degree, but couldn’t find that exact combination of words in any of the job offerings either. 

Finally, she said, “Well, I’m afraid we don’t have anything that fits your education or your background.” 

Now, I realized I could try to explain to her what I could actually do. But I also thought to myself: Perhaps it’s pointless to try to get into a company that sends this kind of person to a job fair, demonstrating an utter lack of interest in actual qualifications and instead just looking for certain predefined titles that would match something in a database. 

So I went on to another booth, also from a larger corporation, and had roughly the same experience. 

And I was wondering: Well, that’s strange. They don’t care about what I can do or what I could do and what my potential might be. They don’t care about the contents of my education or any experience I’ve had. They just look at the name, the title of my degree. 

Then I ran into a recruiter from a logistics automation company. That booth was smaller and looked a bit less polished. It was just one guy, a little older, and there was nobody around and no queue at the booth. It turned out that this guy actually had something to say. 

He asked me questions, explained what kind of jobs they were offering, and actually tried to understand what I could do. He then explained how my qualifications and experience might match some of the positions they had available. 

A couple of months later, I sent him an email, and, well, that became my first real job after the PhD. 

I will say that I subsequently had my issues with the HR department of that company (more about that in another anecdote further down). But what they did at this job fair was so much better than anything the other companies I talked to were doing. They were actually thinking, asking questions, and talking, instead of flipping through pages looking for exact matches of words. The guy understood the positions the company was offering well enough to actually talk about them. 

The Path of Least Resistance? 

I learned through this and multiple other experiences that if you wanted to get a job, or wanted to help somebody else get a job, you had to find a way around the gatekeepers. And that turned out to be a very important lesson. 

Fast forward: 

I’ve been a professor now for a couple of years, and I’ve been lucky enough to have some excellent students. People whom I would hire right away if I had a job to offer, which I normally don’t, but whom I would recommend to any company looking for a really strong candidate. I’ve been able to help several of these students find good positions through personal recommendations. But we always went around the gatekeepers. 

One remarkable example was one of my favorite students, who was looking for a job in Berlin. Knowing her quite well, because she had taken several of my courses and written her bachelor’s thesis with me, I had a good idea of a company for which she would be a really good match. 

So I mentioned that company to her. 

And she said, “Well, you know, that’s funny. I actually applied to that company and got a rejection.” 

I was very surprised to hear this. And I thought to myself, there are two possibilities: Knowing that company quite well, having worked with them for a couple of years, either her application was really bad, or the HR person who read your application was really dumb. 

I read her application, it really wasn’t bad. 

So I talked to someone I knew at the company, the person she would actually work for if she were hired, and recommended her personally. I also mentioned that she had previously been rejected by HR, but that I thought this must have been a mistake. 

She was hired and has been working there ever since. And from what I’ve heard, she’s done a fantastic job. In fact, she’s been so good that other students from our university were subsequently brought in because she had made such a good impression. 

Having worked with HR departments in my consulting work, and having grown up with my father working with HR departments for more than 30 years, I’ve heard a story or two and experienced a thing or two that made me wonder whether we’re actually paying enough attention to the people we put into HR departments. 

Another anecdote:  

A logistics automation company invited my students and me to their technology center. We heard presentations from their HR department, where they talked about job openings, internships and the internship experience, and how much emphasis they placed on working with students. We enjoyed some technical presentations and had a great tour of the technology center. It was a great day for everyone. The company sponsored the bus that took us to their campus. They served snacks and drinks and spent a lot of time with us. And I know the entire event was quite costly. 

And that makes sense. After all, how else could you raise interest in your company among so many potential applicants (who had already been preselected by me)? We had some really strong candidates among the participants. 

So I think it was a pretty good investment for the company. Or at least it could have been. 

Now, one of our best students subsequently applied for an internship at the company, and I even wrote him a letter of recommendation to strengthen his application and help him land the position. 

He got a rejection. And so did everyone else. I was wondering what exactly they were thinking. They invited us. They spent a lot of money on us. They received some really good applications from really good applicants and rejected every single one of them. 

I know the company fairly well, and I know that they later hired a bunch of very mediocre students, none of them participated in the tour, and not one of them I would have recommended. 

A little later, as part of our student recruitment efforts at THWS, I had a couple of phone calls with the same HR department, though with different people there, and tried to convince them to establish a dual study program with THWS, meaning that students would go through an apprenticeship at that company while studying at THWS. 

In our final phone call, when I was hoping we would reach an agreement, the HR person told me, “You know, Dr. Beer, we thought about this, but we really don’t think that the logistics engineering program fits our company, because we’ve got nothing to do with logistics. We build machines.” 

That response left me speechless. I didn’t really know what to say, because I was talking to the HR department of one of the largest logistics automation companies in the world. 

They had “nothing to do with logistics”. They “built machines”. 

Now, in all fairness, he was “just an HR guy,” and what does he know? Also, quite frankly, I think he accidentally spoke the truth, because many logistics automation companies really do build machines and don’t demonstrate a deeper understanding of logistics and how to use these machines properly. But that’s not the point of this article. 

I think HR is an underappreciated function, and given that HR departments serve as the gatekeepers of companies, I don’t think we place enough emphasis on staffing these departments with the right people. 

The final straw that made me write this article today was a conversation I had with a recent graduate of our school. Another really strong student. Technically skilled, hardworking, very bright, and a very kind person. Somebody you would want hire in an instant. 

He told me today in the office that he had applied for a position at a logistics service company where he had completed his apprenticeship some years ago, before he started studying. He didn’t even get a response. 

He also applied to a large warehouse automation company, which happens to be the same company I’ve mentioned before, and didn’t receive a reply either. In fact, he received either rejections or no reply at all for all of his applications, which he said were many. And knowing him fairly well, and knowing several of the companies to which he applied, it left me wondering again: Has somebody in HR killed his application before anybody from the technical departments could even see it? 

Let me add one last anecdote: 

When I was still working in industry full time, I was looking for an intern who could support our team’s operations. As I was going through the applications on my desk, one application caught my attention. It was really well written, properly formatted, and overall a really good application from a student who seemed like a really nice chap. 

So I called HR and asked them to invite him for an interview. 

The lady in HR told me, “Well, we have already sent him the rejection letter.” 

And I asked, “Why did you do this? His application is really good.” 

She said, “Well, we thought he seemed overly confident.” 

And this made me almost explode. OVERLY CONFIDENT. 

Some HR dimwit had rejected a really strong candidate because that candidate seemed “overly confident,” which, to put this into perspective, was significantly more confident than any of the HR people who had made that decision. I would never have hired any of the HR folks I had to deal with — among other reasons for that lack of confidence they radiated.  

I told the lady, “Please give him a call and invite him for an interview right now.” Which she did. And then we hired him, and he turned out to be an absolutely fantastic guy, someone we would later offer a full-time position. 

Now, what’s the point of this article? It’s more than HR bashing. In fact, this is not HR bashing. I am being very polite, considering my experience with HR departments. I think most HR departments are a disgrace, and I have a very low opinion of most people I’ve met in HR (yes, I know. Don’t write such things on LinkedIn. I know…). 

I do appreciate the importance of HR, and I think we should put some of the most excellent people we can find into HR departments. But that’s not who typically ends up in HR. Frequently, at least so it seems to me, people who have no real qualifications, no specialization, nothing that sets them apart from the rest, somehow end up in HR. It feels like a company’s bad bank.  

Doing Interviews and Shit 

And I know it’s not appropriate for a professor to base any analysis on a handful of anecdotes. Let me share another anecdote nonetheless. I promise that’s the last one. 

I was at the gym one day, long before I became a professor, when I overheard two girls talking about what they wanted to do after their studies. 

One of them said, “Yeah, I think I really want to go into HR.” 

And the other one asked, “Really? HR? Why?” 

The first one said, “You know, I think that’s really cool. You know, doing interviews and shit.” 

Yeah. Doing interviews and shit. Exactly. I think that sums up what many people, including those working in HR, think HR is doing, and what many people in HR are actually doing. And I think that’s a problem. 

So, after the conversation I had today with our recent graduate, I thought, well, I can surely help him find a position, including at one of the companies that had already rejected him. But I also thought that this situation really deserves some more attention. It’s so frustrating. It’s frustrating for me to witness and hear about these experiences, and it is, of course, much more frustrating for the applicants who receive rejections for no good reason or never hear back from the company at all. Good people with high potential are getting rejected by dimwits.  

Now, as a finak note, if any of you in logistics is looking for a really good guy in the Würzburg–Schweinfurt area, send me a message, and I’ll be happy to connect you with him. 

But please don’t just let HR process his application. Talk to him yourself.