Alison

Personally I wouldn't recommend doing a Masters now. You are unlikely to get the most development out of your investment as you will have no practical experience to test it against or draw upon. It will be frankly just (literally) an academic exercise.

If you use the search facilities you will find a number of people who have gone down this route and get quite frustrated that when they apply for jobs they are considered over qualified.

Your best bet is probably to keep trying to get an entry level HR job and then doing a Level 3 or 5 qualification (which you will probably be able to top up to a Masters at an appropriate time) or do one of those qualifications in the hope it will help.

CIPD accredited doesn't necessarily mean a huge amount at Masters level. Most people will look at the Masters first and the accredited second. But look out to see if gaining the qualification will automatically gain you affiliate membership of the institute - that's worth having.

Hi Alison,

I was in the same boat as yourself 6 or so years ago and through persistence and developing my admin skills through temporary, non HR roles and securing a longer term temp role in payroll ultimately gave me the skills my first HR employer wanted. A level 3 qualification may help in terms of your understanding but when speaking to others on my course who were not in HR roles at the time, there were elements that lacked context for them, this may have been just a personal perception from them though.