Hi All
I live in Northern Ireland and I've been working as a recruiter in an agency for the last 5 years and have a solid background in recruitment but the sales approach in an agency is starting to wear me down. I started doing my L3 CIPD in HR in September and I'm due to finish in June. I'd really love to move into HR due to the variety of tasks and different things to get your teeth into, so to speak.
I've been looking for jobs as an HR Officer for over 6 months just to get exposure to interview and I'm being choosy about what I apply to. I've noticed there are a few problems: NI is small, HR professionals are generally aware of each other in the industry here so I have to be careful. Salaries are low and no-one advertises their own jobs - they go straight to recruitment agencies more often than not! Those also offering jobs in NI don't seem to recognise the knowledge that recruiters have in Employment Legislation either, and they say my experience in recruitment is irrelevant an HR Officers role.
Another problem here is that companies here don't seem to use CIPD for hiring themselves (there are no NI jobs except for Hays on CIPD - says a lot really!), and it's usually a case of who knows whom so so far, CIPD isn't proving beneficial despite every job advert asking for it as a desirable!
I'm wondering if it's worth my while continuing with trying to push to get into HR and continuing my CIPD membership, or am I actually wasting my time? I'm enjoying the course, I would actually consider doing the Level 5 if I knew that it would be worthwhile.
ND