Just read this and it is well worth reading. I am not yet working in HR but studying L5. I am in a well paid job in the FM world but hope to move into HR in the next couple of years. my aim is to do some volunteering to gain the experience and then with the transferable skills I have, move in to HR permanently. I agree with the comment that one may need to take a salary drop for a while and am prepared for that. Glad I came across this post.

The blog is an interesting read. It would be good to have a similar piece by someone with more recent experience of making the transition. Natalie says that she had to go to 9 interviews before she got her first job. The people who come here for advice are making many, many more applications than that. I have the impression that it has become much harder in recent years to get into HR than it used to be but that might be because the people who come to this forum for help are by definition the people who are having difficulty.

I was looking at the Wiki section of the forums the other day because there was an answer to a post I thought would be a useful one to steer people to but I couldn't work out how to add it. It would be good to collate some of the replies to these sorts of queries in the "Discussion Threads of Note" section. At the moment, when people ask for advice on how to break into HR, mostly the reply is "there's a lot in the forums already so try a search". It would be a bit more friendly to signpost them to something specific.

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

Will take that away as an action, Elizabeth Divver :)

In reply to Steve Bridger:

There's also a great list of CIPD webinar recordings here - all covering career-based topics: www.cipd.co.uk/.../building-your-career-2021

In reply to Elizabeth Divver:

I attended nine interviews in one week, the applications themselves were in excess of 400! I cannot tell people how many times I wanted to walk away, but I was so fortunate that I had one lady willing to take a chance on me in that ninth interview :)

In reply to Alice:

Good luck Alan, I wish you all the best of luck, keep going and I promise you it will pay off!

A good read.
I too have learnt to look at the industry and business that I want to work in.
I have learnt how important this is! Also, I agree with the comment about HR being for people that are ok with not feeling comfortable. This is something that I admittedly didn't really have a full appreciate of when I first started in HR, but it is something that I have really become accustomed to.