Impossible with a capital 'i' to advance in the HR profession?

You have the CIPD 7, Associate Membership of the body, an MSc in International HRM, are considering a PhD in HR / Occupational Psychology and have four years experience working as an HR Administrator.

However, despite of all of that, you basically still can’t get above HR Administrator level to the next level or get an HR Advisor’s level role.

Part of the issue is that they don’t take on Trainee / Junior HR Advisor’s (or indeed Trainee / Junior HRBP’s) and you can’t get the necessary experience in an HR Administrator’s role to get the HR Advisor’s job.

You volunteer outside hours as an HR Advisor and as a CIPD Mentor, and attend all the events in your branch, but it still does not count or is officially recognised as a formal paid 9-5 role to make the cut.

It’s also one of those scenarios that it just does not ever happen for / to you how many applications you ever make, so are any of the following viable options to take instead:

(1) Come to terms with it and make a life long career as an HR Administrator instead, or as a Senior HR Administrator, aiming to be the very best that you can be at that;

(2) Pull completely out of the HR profession as a whole and change career sectors, professions and pathways, starting out again  from zero;

(3) Emigrate and see if you can get the role instead in another country in or outside the EU;

(4) Look at going self employed as an HR Consultant on the Peninsula model?

How would you personally deal with it if you faced a total brick wall blockage that despite your very best efforts, you just could not vertically progress, get on or up in the HR profession as a whole past HR Administrator?

Parents
  • Hi, it's easy to read too much into statistics or to misinterpret data and come to a wrong or off track conclusion ...however linked in ( and I guess it's in their interests to do so) have made reference recently to the increasing number of jobs that are filled by networking. Some reports suggest %ages in the 80s. Data such as this prompts the thought that if efforts to find a suitable job are channeled exclusively through conventional routes such as job boards, agencies etc, the liklihood of finding a suitable role is likely to be lower than if the job search effort is weighted more towards networking and less conventional means. By way of illustrating the latter - one assignment I found was as a result of talking to a fellow rider ( complete stranger) having just completed the London to Brighton bike ride, one year - exhausting but in this case rewarding ! May be not quite the answer you were looking for but in a nutshell i'm suggesting a route 5 ) don't give up just yet, persist and make some serious inroads with networking, if you haven't already done so.
Reply
  • Hi, it's easy to read too much into statistics or to misinterpret data and come to a wrong or off track conclusion ...however linked in ( and I guess it's in their interests to do so) have made reference recently to the increasing number of jobs that are filled by networking. Some reports suggest %ages in the 80s. Data such as this prompts the thought that if efforts to find a suitable job are channeled exclusively through conventional routes such as job boards, agencies etc, the liklihood of finding a suitable role is likely to be lower than if the job search effort is weighted more towards networking and less conventional means. By way of illustrating the latter - one assignment I found was as a result of talking to a fellow rider ( complete stranger) having just completed the London to Brighton bike ride, one year - exhausting but in this case rewarding ! May be not quite the answer you were looking for but in a nutshell i'm suggesting a route 5 ) don't give up just yet, persist and make some serious inroads with networking, if you haven't already done so.
Children