Breanne asked if I would ever star in a reality show about Human Resources. I laughed it off — but worse shows have been on TV.
I wonder:
- What would a reality show about HR professionals or recruiters look like?
- Would you do it?
- Would anyone watch?
Thoughts?
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
It seems like we are already on a reality show happening now, online… And, yes you are the star.
Isn’t that why we blog?
I don’t know who would watch, and I’m not sure what they coudl do for it since a lot of things in HR are confidential, and I’m not sure I’d ever want to be on a reality show.
Is that a vague enough answer for you?
Think of all the fun recruiter/candidate stories we could tell?!? I need to think more on the content but yes, I would participate (probably behind the camera) and yes, I would watch. Do it!!
Wouldn’t it be sort of an ensemble show, with HR as the backdrop for the real drama, kind of like “Love Boat?” Who is on progressive discipline? Why? Who is sexually harassing whom? Who has been falsely accused of sexual harassment by the woman who later has to be committed to the mental institution by her parents?
What are they doing about the married VP who is having the affair with his secretary? He takes her on company trips and expenses it — fraud! theft! — and has moved his bookcase to block the window into his office, which is a clear safety violation, so he can continue to boink her at lunch.
What about diversity bingo? How are they going to satisfy self-imposed diversity requirements and still make a profit? That is, they have a 55 year old, 25 year white male company vet whose plants have always turned a profit, but darnit, it just wouldn’t look right to promote him to division head when there is a (pick one) 1) white 32-year-old woman with almost no industry experience and a 2) 28 YO Hispanic male (Cuban refugee, white, highly educated, but darnit, he still counts as Hispanic, people!) with almost no industry experience.
Wait! Let’s give them each a division and see what happens! Oh. Too bad. Both divisions start to lose a lot of money and they have to fire the diversity candidates, who really, both had potential but weren’t ready to be promoted to that level. In the meantime, the white guy tries to decide if he should pull out his ammo of 1) vet and 2) American Indian.
What happens when one manager lets his team be removed from their offices in the nice HQ building with covered parking and moved to cubicles in the converted warehouse 13 miles away where people have been carjacked? Half his team quits over the next three years. Will anything happen to the manager, who is within 8 years of retirement?
What about the HR VP who designs the dress code — no sandals or capris — and then violates it herself? How is that handled?
See, there is all kind of potential here! Lots of conflict, lots of drama, lots of places for HR to be involved either as an actor or as a commenter. I would totally watch!
Dude, I’m a reality show junkie, so I love the concept. My idea would be a stew of many tried and true models, but would rest primarily on the stable triangle of The Real World, Survivor, and The Apprentice. Essentially 10 HR professionals would go to work for a fictional company staffed by actors (to avoid confidentiality issues). They would initially work in two teams to resolve HR issues (recruiting, ER, Benefits, etc.), these would be there weekly challanges. All participants would live together with their teams, in well appointed homes, but be monitored 24/7. The losing team will have to vote to give one member immunity each week (there’s the twist – one of the losers will be safe), but at then end of the show they confront the “Board” made up of 3 hosts/business leaders, and two subject matter experts in their challange area (think John Sumser and Dr. Sullivan for recruiting), and the Board would fire someone from the losing team (but not the person with immunity).
I envision the challanges being very interesting to HR pro’s and lay people alike, and the real fun will be the fights for immunity on the loosing team.
The competitiong will continue until the final two compete head to head, and the winner will get a cash prize, and possibly a dream HR job (if one exists).
And hell yeah I would jump into a reality show! I’m a total extrovert and love the stage!
Wow…an HR reality show…talk about a soap opera! I could just imagine all the bickering and firing and oh wow- it would be quite a mess i think- would make for PERFECT reality TV
I’ve always said “I can write a book on all the things I’ve encountered in HR”, no one would believe it. A reality show would not be too far off, there are the good things we do for people like all the events including baby showers, retirement parties etc., there are the bad things we have to do such as terminations and lay-offs, and there are the hard things we have to do such as disciplinary actions and warnings. I guess you can say its intriguing enough for a reality show. I sometimes feel that what I have to do in HR can be surreal such as having to call the cops on a disgruntle employee or advising an employee to go to the hospital because his toes looked gangrene or having to tell an employee his mother just passed away because the father asked me to….these are actually things that i’ve experienced working in HR and all in a days work….
I like HR puf’s idea except we need to bring in real candidates and secretly tape the interviews, and what they do in the conference room when no one else is there.
And then we need to secretly tape the post-interview meetings with all management peeps so we can hear all the snide snarky crap that gets said when the hapless candidate leaves the room
Then we need to show the hapless candidates the snarky comments videos and let them vote on which snide HR person gets tossed out of the cubicle.
Of course, the host would have to “Michael VanDervort has resigned to pursue career opportunities more in keeping with his current interests.”
OH…and we could make all the HR people stay in the office 2 hours a day for the duration of the show.
Let’s be honest here people. Just creating the policies around show behavior, dress code, etc. would consume any momentum this idea might have. After all, we are HR people.
I volunteer to be the jerk… I don’t watch reality TV, but I have it on good authority there is always a jerk.
It would need to be on HBO or Showtime so you could put all the racey stuff in (that your not allowed to talk about – like the pedophile CFO or the sr vp having an affair, etc…)…get Larry David to play the bumbling VP and Tina Fey as the Recruiter…sign me up!
M
I think it has already been done and it is called The Office on NBC. It is an HR nightmare!
I don’t think it would work due to all the HIPAA violations such a show would rack up.
Only if I can eat worms and be a tribe leader
My pregnant wife became a headhunter the moment she was laid of the day before the firm would have had to pay maternity benefits. The one job she found for me was with a friend and a clueless co-worker asked, “What was your wife’s fee?” “Her fee was … my entire salary!” Most interview stories take way too much set-up for the all too brief punchline. As an engineer, I have had a few amusing exit interviews. One exit interview began, “You have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, what are you doing here?”
Eventually, when when asked why I was leaving I said that the third “Your new boss is…” email was a few too many. Not too much more to say after that.
I picture more along the lines of Truelife I’m in HR. A camera would just follow me for a month in the office interviewing candidates and talking to employees. You couldn’t use actors, because the best writers in the world can’t come up with the things these people tell me.
Would I be on it? Only if I was retiring from HR or getting enough money to retire.
Only if Mike Rowe hosts it.
I do sort of imagine it like The Office, but everyone outside of HR would be like Michael and the HR person would never actually say anything, they would just look at the camera like “seriously?!”
I think a Recruiter reality show would be great if it also followed rejected candidates around afterward when they think of a million reasons they were rejected (other than their lack of skills, etc).
@Breanne You are heartless!
@HRWench Great idea. I love him.
@Nick You’re hired. You are the star.
@Spouse Wow, your experience is much better than most experiences in HR and recruiting.
@HRUnderling GROSS!
@HRPuter Whoa, just like a HR person to get all rules-y on us!
@Mark I think 30 Rock is the best work-related comedy on TV. Work is life, right?
@George I love it.
@Mark Stelzner I think there are two different camps of HR people. Maybe they should fight?
@Michael VD You are so cynical.
@HRPuf Okay, you are now the Executive Producer and the star. OMG.
@Latina HR Exactly. We are living the show.
@Karen You are an optimist!!
@Class OMG, you are the screenwriter — but do reality shows have scripts?
@Kat We’d be lucky to have you there.
@Minion I love your vague response. So cute.
@Amanda Well said & thank you. [blush]
Why do we need a reality show in HR when we deal with all the other crap everyday. This morning I had a mom calling for her son who was to sick to work, a plant manager called and asked if a doctors note was good enough for someone to get paid for holiday pay, when they did not work! Then an employee can’t work (illness) and now realizes he/she has to go to the doctor but they feel the office visit cost to much ($20). We are not paying minimum wage and we offer great bennies. This was just the first 15 minutes of a Monday/Tuesday. Oh and the employee who wants to borrow against there 401k but already has a current lian and feels its a goverment conspiracy. he wants the IRS’s and other phone numbers from me. That was from 8:30 till 9:00. I could go on but most of you know the drill….
Yeah have the camera’s follow us around and they will lock all of us up because if they saw half the crap and crud we deal with they would run for the hills and thank god they counted widgets and bolts for a living…
Sometimes moving metal in the skys (airplanes) was easier than dealing with employees all day. just a thought…:)
I’d watch it, I think it would make a great comedy, kinda like “The Office”
I’m thinking it would be chalk-full of interviews like the ones Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly had in “Step Brothers.” Although, as we are all too good at our jobs, those interviews wouldn’t even reach that point with any sort of screening.
That being said, I think it would have to be scripted. With crazy, Conglomerate HR Policy tactics like in “Better off Ted.”
http://abc.go.com/primetime/betteroffted/
The clip is pretty good, nothing quite like having a forced indivdual “safe” personality from management.
I think this concept would work better as “The Office” mockumentary format. I gotta say, I love the Toby moments on that show. I can relate!
@Amanda I think the Toby moments are priceless. I think we need a Toby/Michael war. Those episodes are best.
@S-Dizzle I haven’t see better off ted. I heard the reviews were bad. I’ll give it a shot, though!
@Shane Thanks for your vote of confidence!
@ATCnowHR I think you need a vacation from HR — like me!
Interesting! I’d like to see a HR reality show that’s kind of Donald Trump meets the laziest, most fired, ex-employees in America. HR professionals would act as team leaders, charged with whipping their slobs into shape. Oops! I mean: coaching them to become exemplary workplace contributors.
The HR pro who hasn’t fired everyone on their team by the end of the season wins. And the HR pro who *should* have fired everyone on their team gets iconically fired by none other than The Donald himself!
How’s that for “reality?”
Hey Laurie.
Its a small world they say!! I have been thinking about the concept for almost 6 months now. Only today I decided to google it and find out if someone was nuts enough like me to think of this one…and guess what?? So congratulations, you are kinda nuts too
… I personally dont think that Apprentice is the way to go… According to me,the beauty of a ’successfull’ reality show is that its UNIQUE…and that is its beast too… What I mean is that we have to be unique in your presentation, or you will lose the attention very easily…. I think we HR pros need to find ourselves a NEW COLOUR….something out of the RGB spectrum… Get the drift??
Just a thought…
Ciao.