I’m finally hiring someone to replace one of my staff who left some months back. Because it’s a small office, they don’t have a local HR person, and while their HR functions used to be run out of this office, now they’re run out of yet another regional office. But because this isn’t a business operations person being hired, but a corporate IT person, the HR functions are actually handled out of corporate HQ.
All of which has made this an entertaining hiring process, especially since it’s been a number of years since I ever actually hired someone, and thus am unfamiliar with the current processes.
Anyhow, last week I sent a note to the corporate HQ HR person who’s supposedly in charge of such things, noting that I was interested in making an offer to someone, but I wanted to know if that was something formally done by HR or by me or what the proper procedure was. He sent me a note back saying that if I filled out the attached form, it would be the first step in generating their personnel file and would let HR create an appropriate offer letter.
Cool. I opened up the attached form.
Um …
It wasn’t a blank template.
It was an actual form.
With real data in it.
For a real person.
Who is (based on the contents of Form Box 6) of a significantly higher pay grade than me. Which amount is then spelled out (in Box 12b). Alongside (in 12c) the hiring bonus and stock options said person is getting.
Well.
I quick checked the corporate address book, and, yes, it was a real person, and, thus, presumably real data.
Now, were I a nasty person, I’m sure I could make some nefarious use of this data. At the very least, their SSN (box 2) would be of value somewhere.
But, of course, I’m a nice kind of fellow, and security-minded to boot. So I sent the HR gent an e-mail back, pointing out that I didn’t know if the data was real, but the name certainly was, in the form he sent me.
He sent back a very quick, very apologetic, “Please forget what I sent you.”
I replied, “Forget what?”
Still, it was kind of interesting. And certainly the kind of thing that could cause heads to roll (or auditors to pop a gasket) if it happened at the wrong time, with the wrong person.
Of course, I’ve had days like that, too. One that comes to mind was the day our internal e-mail system went wonky and sent e-mail to all the wrong recipients. Including outbound Internet e-mail, at a time when I still used company e-mail for personal use, e.g., participation in an ideological discussion list. Yeah, that was a fun day …
Anyway, no harm done, file deleted, name forgotten, all’s right with the world.
But it was kind of funny.
(Posted by CronDave)