Career advice for someone wishing to work in HR for an international company - General - Careers Clinic

4 Career advice for someone wishing to work in HR for an international company

20 Feb, 2019 14:53

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone can offer me some advice. I am 25 and just started out my career in HR. To give you a bit of background, I graduated almost 3 years ago with a degree in Education Studies (not teaching, my degree looked at issues in education, policy, etc) and ended up falling into recruitment (agency) after a brief 6 week contract in HR/Recruitment Administration. I went into agency recruitment quite naive life most graduates, not fully understanding the sales aspect and thinking of it more a role where I would be interviewing candidates, helping them find the right roles, so quite soon into the career I realised it wasn't for me. However, I stuck at it for a year and a half to save to go travelling, and continued the job over in Australia for a year. Within that time, I became exposed to the HR career path and after much research i've decided it's the career path I want to go down. I've took it upon myself to study employment law, policy, ER etc.

I came home from Australia in October and secured a contract HR admin role in a shared services centre for an international company, which is coming to an end next month. The role i'm in currently is predominantly specialising in the recruitment side of HR. I'm now starting to look for my 1st permanent HR role and although my background is in recruitment, i'm really wanting a generalist role so I can gain exposure to all aspects of HR. I haven't had experience in Employee Relations but i'm very much interested in this area, alongside reward and learning and development so i'm looking to find a role which combines all this with recruitment. My ultimate goal which i'm working for is to get to Advisor/Management level, in a generalist capacity, for an international corporate business such as the place I work for at the moment.

I'm wondering if anybody could shed some light on the best way to get there? I know i'm going to have to start from admin level and work my way up, and i'm looking for a company that will put me through my CIPD, but it's the generalist experience that is important to me. I've read I will probably be better staring in a small organisation to gain generalist experience, which suits me fine, and to stay away from shared services centre. I'm just wanting to gain peoples advice on this? What is the 'issue' with shared service centres and why should I stay away? I have seen a role which seems to suggest I would cover all areas of HR but the fact it's in a SS centre puts me off a bit, but it is for an international business.

I'd just llike some advice how best to go about progressing towards my ultimate ambition of working within a general HR role for an international company.

Thanks for reading!

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Keith | 0 Posts

20 Feb, 2019 15:05

If its a good opportunity and not just endless administration then I would grab the SS role with both hands.

Increasingly this is one of few ways into HR for many people and I think its odd advice to ignore this avenue entirely - its hard enough anyway without cutting off large numbers of jobs

In general terms there are lots of threads on getting into HR so its probably worth searching out a few to get some ideas.
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Cass Clothier | 0 Posts

20 Feb, 2019 15:38

In reply to Keith:
Agree with Keith that the role you are looking at could tick a lot of boxes in terms of providing you a good foundation for which to pursue your career in the future in that it is global, the duties involved will no doubt covers a broad range of the general HR elements and even better if it gives exposure to working in a corporate environment. These aspects will provide a good platform for building up your experience for a career as a Generalist for an international organisation
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Robey | 0 Posts

20 Feb, 2019 16:04

The advice you've been given would have been good advice five years ago. But the job market in the UK is more static than it's ever been in my experience. This forum is replete with people desperate to get into HR so if you've got a toehold at the SSC, I'd say take it and build from there.

It's true that, in an SSC, you'll not necessarily get the kind of face-to-face working time that most people get into HR for, but you'll get lots of insight in process and policy that will stand you in good stead for the future.
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Paul | 0 Posts

27 Feb, 2019 17:47

My problem with the SSC environment is that it isn't really HR as such, it normally just deals with the HR Admin and you will probably find that most people who work there aren't from a HR background, sure you will hear terms like Centre of Excellence (CoE) but the reality is many of the places have been set up with the intention of saving money and nothing else. I know one which is constantly recruiting staff (they look out for people from a call centre background, although that isn't the business, far from it!) because there is high turnover. My own personal experience at a HRSSC is turning up on Day 1 and being told to share someone's password! The people who instigated this didn't realise it was illegal under DPA and Misuse of Computers Acts and when told said "Oh but our company policies over ride that!" No such policy exsists! As I often point out to people, that the vast majority of people land up in HR by accident. Someone I was at college on a CIPD course with over 20 years ago went on to be a HR Manager of a garden centre, they now run their own business which isn't HR and earn a lot more. One final thing, working in HR doesn't make you immune from being made redundant
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