HR has mostly become useless – What's your opinion?
First, a lot of HR personnel is hired not because of a merit, but on a whim of a manager. There are some golden exceptions where HR is really good, and the hiring was done in accordance to what the company needs, but they are just that - exceptions.
Second - The education is simply lacking when you have the HRM, HRS coming from majors such as Literature, or even in some cases Biology. In reality, regardless of country, they do not know anything about procedures, CoC, contracts, salary calculations, personal dev etc. A lot of these are handled by different types of HR focused on Economy, Psychology, Law and Management. People with majors in other fields are simply not capable to handle it, without any training or complementary HR education.
This leads to education based discrimination, where in some cases candidates for HR positions are discriminated by HRM with less or no required education to be an HR. To talk about gender based discrimination would be rather pointless since we can see that the ration is 80/20 when it comes to female to male comparison.
The less knowledge HR has, the less power it has, and it is in the hands of the management to with them as they want.
In lot of cases we hear that HR is there to protect the company. However, HR is there to protect itself. HR will pick less qualified HR to become part of their team, to be sure she/he is not endangered with potentially better candidate, especially if other candidate is better fit than HR Manager. How can someone that does not know the intricate workings of the company protect it? HR should be there to be a middle man to find solution that does not screw the employee and protects the corporate image.
When this happens, companies start losing money because they are potential not hiring best engineers, administration staff, due to HR not realizing what the company needs. Both the candidates and the companies lose in the end.
Due to sheer incompetency, it is not rare case in my country to see HR related jobs outsourced to law firm. This is a travesty in itself, since outsourcing the HR makes it harder for employee to connect with someone to discuss his problems and resolve it. Law firms should be used to handle stuff such as acquisitions, lawsuits, drafting of highly specialized contracts etc.
Personality tests are given by non-psychologists or themselves are non viable to be used. In a lot of countries, this is a breach of law and ethical norms. You can't write contracts as legal specialist and give tests to candidates. This is plainly illegal.
Third - Disinterest in what the company is doing - It is sad to have HR that does not know what the company they are employed at does. In tech companies, this is especially the case where they are disinterested in learning to understand either tech or the sector that company belongs to.
There is a a lot of buzz about employer branding. It should be a job where marketing collaborates with HR on how best to promote the company and its activities, benefits, making sure that employees are happy with employer and their ambassadors in outside world and not a separate position.
Fourth - Expensive ATS systems are being unused - BreezyHR, Workday or any other are used and integrated into websites. At the same time, a lot of the candidates never hear back from the companies. Rejection emails are the norm today because they are a way for HR to shield from counterfeedback, and liability. There is no excuse on not sending even those templates since they can automated. Why waste money on something that someone does not want or does not know how to use? You would be surprised on how much ATS and other modules are unused.