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

Andre

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?

  • in reply to Keith
    Have you sought out any interview coaching or similar? I coach women returners to work for a charity, and it's really positive. Having neutral and independent feedback might really help you to communicate your skills and experience in a way that gets more positive results.
  • in reply to Keith

    I spoke to a friend (who is not in HR) about this issue and they gave me the best possible, practical and realistic advice.

    Welcome to the real and adult world, we don’t always get what we want and if you can’t ever get an HR Advisor’s role, you can’t and have at least tried your very best.

    At least I have a job as an HR Administrator that pays the bills instead of being long term unemployed and should learn to be content and grateful for having that at least, despite having a Level 7.

    Organisations have the right to choose their own staff team and if they don’t want to take you for wherever reason, tough and that’s life.

    Perhaps option 1 is thus the most realistic and practical to follow and make a long term career out of being an HR Administrator, whilst doing a PhD on the side to show that I still have certain abilities despite the job title.

    Any thoughts and what makes you feel that Marketing would be anymore difficult? 

  • in reply to Andre
    Or was that just the answer you wanted to hear?
  • in reply to Andre
    Andre

    This is not scientific but my sense is that marketing (it its truest sense) is in general more prone to ageism than HR. Most of the careers I have seen in marketing tend to be 20/30's and early 40's then often people go off and do something else either working for themselves of a different field. Not to say there aren't very successful people older in Marketing roles but I think it would be far harder to break into.

    I also think given what you have said about your approach to job searching and interviews that breaking into a true marketing role (as opposed to just being an administrator in a different department) will be quite challenging for you.

    If being a HR Administrator and getting a PhD alongside it will make you happy and give you satisfaction then go for it. As I think I said earlier (or on another of your threads) you are an experiment of one and need to work out what works for you.

    But this morning you were adamant that you were giving up on HR and going down the marketing path, this afternoon you are considering staying in HR but doing a PhD. So I think finding a trusted coach or confident who can help you walk step by step through your choices, who can help you realise your true strengths and weaknesses and who can help you decide on the right path would be time well spent.

    Best of luck

    keith
  • in reply to Keith
    Having realistically looked into it over the weekend, I can’t get into marketing at the age of 45. It may take years to break in and also involve years of trying to secure unpaid internships to gain enough experience to secure a paid entry level role, whilst paying for CIM studies alongside that with no guarantee of ever actually getting any position at all.

    So, living now in the real world and as I can’t become an HR Practitioner, I see the final options as in order of realistic sequence:

    (1) Staying and doing what I am doing now and making a long term career as an HR Administrator;

    (2) A lateral move by combining both the CIPD Level 7 in HR and L&D to become an L&D Administrator;

    (3) Trying to get into freelance training, HR and L&D Consulting;

    (4) HR Academia with a PhD;

    (5) Leaving the profession and training for a new field more open to mid career changers.

    Impasse is the word to use here, but I feel that the real root and underlying cause is that age old catch 22 cycle that you can’t get a job without experience and experience without a job, and now require experience on the next level to move to the next level.

    There are no automatic guarantees and vertical progression is never a given.

    Finally and on a separate note, although it is not an issue for me at all, I see a clear pattern in my present role that I am the only male HR Administrator in a team of 15, one of the oldest and all the other males are Advisors, Managers or HRBP’s. Any conclusions I should draw from that?
  • in reply to Andre
    No conclusions at all. It’s just how it is in your department and for me has no relevance to your struggles to get on. Indeed if there is ( as your underlying suggestion seems to be) sone underlying sex discrimination allowing males to progress then this should make it easier not harder for you to progress.

    As for your options you have been given loads of advice from colleagues as to what may be holding you back and what steps you might take to move on. I am not sure I can add anything useful to them.
  • in reply to Andre
    Beware of allowing a misguided sense of entitlement to enter your thought processes. I'm still perplexed by your belief that you "can't become an HR practitioner".
  • in reply to Robey
    I'll just throw my hat into the ring here - I 'only' have CIPD level 3 and I did that about 8 years ago. However I was already in an HR Advisory role when I started it, and have held various positions since in a range of different organisations, including HRBP, ER specialist and HR Ops manager.

    I accepted that I would need to keep leaving places to get better jobs elsewhere - I've never found a place where there has been much emphasis on (or sometimes, opportunity for) internal progression. That doesn't suit everyone, some people prefer to spend longer with one company even if they don't get to progress. I was willing to do what it took and I think that also got me wider experience in different areas and types of business, so when I go to interviews now I find I can nearly always draw on experience gained from somewhere similar, even if it was a few years ago. This always seems to trump the lack of CIPD 5 or 7 (they usually ask why I dont have these and I give my standard answer which they tend to accept).

    So how did I get into an Advisory role in the first place? I started as an Administrator and later got an HR Officer role in a small company - it was then down to me to make my mark and I set about recommending lots of changes, I was pro-active. I researched what I didn't know and used free advisory helplines and the internet. I made it my business to learn as much about HR as I could and was then able to impart what was usually deemed as helpful wisdom! I even ended up handling an unfair dismissal tribunal claim. This then enabled me to secure a more traditional HRA role in a larger company and I just continued to grow and move on. I wouldn't say I have progressed massively in my career, its taken a lot of years to get from HRA to HRBP level but I dont think having CIPD 7 would have really helped fast track that.

    One of the key themes I've noticed is that for more senior roles, employers love it if you have an industry specific background, even though HR is very transferable. If you really feel you are stuck as an Administrator then perhaps try and get a similar role in a different type of company, to at least broaden your industry background.
  • in reply to Robey

    I can’t speak for other individuals as all of our circumstances are unique, but in my particular case it is virtually impossible. I am also being realistic and have come to terms with it, but also grateful that at least I have a job as an HR Administrator.

    I entered the profession at 40, have a CIPD 7 and can’t get formal 9-5 advisory experience.

    The result is an imbalance between education and experience with possibly my age being now against me having turned 45 yesterday.

    Although I was a mid career changer, people also expect you to be on a certain level at a certain stage of life.

    That just did not happen, work or deliver for me, or put another way, I got left behind on and in the labour market.

    In short, I couldn’t get the position(s), it is more difficult to find work and / or start a new career after 40 and I also can’t break into the private sector either.  

  • in reply to Andre

    To summarise this all is a fine nutshell, jobs wise for the profession, HR Administrator is all that I can get, and the situation and circumstance does not change either overtime or with studies. The employers say that I don’t have the experience and I also can’t get the experience. They simply don’t take me. 

    I have ‘a job’ at least which is far better than being out of work and which I should be thankful for.