HR Departments everywhere are woefully under qualified and under educated and wayyyyyyy overpowered for their level of literacy. But it seems, in state government, that problem is even worse.
Short summary: I was hired into a position in state government as a GIS Analyst. The position posting said “GIS Analyst III”, everything in my resume and cover letter was tailored to my education and experience in using various GIS software, every single question in my interview focused on my GIS background (literally every single one), and frankly, if the hiring managers wanted to hire someone with regular experience, they could’ve hired any one of the 3000+ people that’re employed by the state, but they didn’t, they hired the one with a very unique background in xxxx (intentionally left blank) and GIS (a specialty software).
Flash forward 1.5 years, and I come to find out that my only other counterpart, i.e. the only other GIS Analyst in my Department, was compensated higher than I, and they hadn’t ever opened up ArcGIS (the “Xerox” of GISs) or any other mapping software in their life until I had worked with them and gave them a very basic crash course. I’d already knew I was underpaid for my work, but that was the the straw that broke the camels back.
I requested a review of my rate of compensation from our new HR Compensation Analyst. He took a month to “review everything”, and in the end, he recommended no change to my salary (mind you I make ~$50,000/yr, 33yo, bachelors degree in STEM from a great school, 5 years employment with this department, and comparatively, GIS Analyst IIIs in the private sector make ~75,000/yr conservatively).
Needless to say, I was shocked that was their conclusion as you’d think anyone who saw that kind of glaring inconsistency would want to remedy it. Nope. When I asked for their reasoning, they rambled a bit about their “unbiased statistical approach” but untimely landed on “well, that’s not what you were hired to do” re GIS analysis. Needless to say, I was left rather speechless and taken aback. I’d handed him the original job posting that HR themselves had created a year and a half ago that said “GIS Analyst III”, what the actual fuck??? How could any reasonable person sit there and tell someone that with a straight face? (This is all on top of the fact that my day to day work of course involves GIS work).
Not only that, I brought this up with 2 other HR Analyst IVs….and they both said nothing was wrong with his analysis, yet this time, I could see on their faces they were struggling to get it out, they knew it was fucked.
Nonetheless, I’m not giving up. My request is now with the director of HR, and if need be, you bet your ass I will get this shit before the Governor before I let up without a resolution in my favor. I’m not walking away from my PERA account just because some overinflated/overpowered HR Analysts don’t know their ass from their elbow.
Moral of the story thus far is m, no matter how tenured or qualified you are HR will ALWAYS try to dick you over then tell you they’re the only ones who know anything about dick, or even, they’re the only ones who ever even met dick.
Rant over.