Be wary the advice you receive

Recently Ask A Manager posted an article about government career centers. This was of course of interest to me since I work at such a place.We shall say she was not overly complimentary of them.  Here is what I posted to the comment section

I work at one of these now. Alison is right. You can get a lot of bad advice. I have 10+ years of HR experience from the private sector, and I am horrified by some of the advice I’ve heard other staff give. Why does this happen? A few observations:

1. The pay here is ridiculously low, so you’re not likely to attract/retain high quality talent. 2. Most staff don’t have an HR or management background, so they have no practical experience on which to base their recommendations. It would be like me trying to tell you how to do surgery. It’s not going to end well. 3. We have many long term staff who haven’t job searched themselves in ages. They simply don’t have recent relevant job searching experience.

Of course, we do have some staff who can give you good advice. In addition to myself, I have another coworker who was in HR for years, and another who did a lot of hiring at her recent job. Like advice you get from anyone on any topic, you want to evaluate the credibility of the source. Ask people how long they’ve been in this job, what their background is, etc. If the suggestions don’t jive with other reputable sources, don’t implement them. It’s a shame you have to do this, but it is what it is.

And yes, I miss the private sector. I hope to be back in it soon.