Hi All,

Wow, I can't believe the variety of ways we have all either chosen or fallen into the HR world! I have to say that I am surprised at how many of us have 'fallen' into our careers. It makes me wonder if this is the same for all career paths!?

I also fell in to HR, or some would say 'side stepped' from being a dog behaviourist in to HR and training!! I know that sounds random but there is little fundamental difference between animal and human psychology. I was used to training pet owners to effectively deal with their pets and so I picked up my presenting/training skills from there. My role as pet behaviourist relied on me being able to build a rapport with pet owners and diplomatically suggesting different ways of communicating with their animals in order for them to show more positive behaviours.

After falling into a combined internal recruitment and HR role in the public sector, I then moved on to do a similar role for a global company. I realised that my career was going to need a boost so I took a year out of working to complete a Masters in HRM and from there I was lucky enough to get a HR Manager’s role which taught me a huge amount! It was a role that required developing a HR department from scratch. Very much do and learn!!

I am now working as a HR Consultant!

I'm not quite sure how I got into HR!

My first career was in electronics, serving with the Royal Air Force (begun way back in 1963!), but then political changes screwed up the RAF career ladder so I left, intending to set up on my own as a sound-system designer (I play guitar and this seemed to be the best of both interests).

For a time I worked on electronics during the day and played guitar (mainly freelance or sessions) in between or at night, in a variety of styles, from Folk to Rock and Roll. 

The some clown decided that valves (like little electric fires in glass bottles that used to make amplifiers work) were obsolete and everyone would use transistors in future... until even transistors disappeared, first into "integrated circuits", then into "chips"... But by that time I'd decided that: a) Learning a whole new technology was boring, and b)  Sharing an interest with my then-new girlfriend (later my wife for 25 years and still a friend) was much more important than even guitars (a view revised in later life); so I applied for a job as an Ambulanceman. (What today would be called a Paramedic, but we were allowed to use fewer skills in those days).

About twelve years later, having moved on from the NHS to being Operations Director of an international medical rescue service (bringing old men with heart attacks home from far places in the summer and broken-legged skiers from the alps in the winter I realised that most of my time was now being taken up, not by para-medicine (small p) but in people-administration (collating skills, training and rotas of mainly NHS Dr's Nurses and Ambulance crew "moonlighting" with us) and sending them off to strange and wonderful places (including, for instance, Vancouver, LA and Tahiti!)

It was actually while lying under then wing of a chartered Lear-Jet, trying to find some shade on a red-hot Barcelona airport while waiting for a Spanish Ambulance to turn up with a patient (three hours late)  that I realised this wasn't really fun any more: I'm a people-person, not a business administrator. I was spending lots of time pushing paper and flying about monitoring our business but less and less doing anything (in my view) important.

So when there was talk of the company being sold (to a funeral director!) I quit.

That was in the early 1980's and jobs were fairly plentiful, so I "wandered about" (metaphorically speaking) doing some research and analysis into skills gaps and training needs for a Northern University; collecting qualifications in H&S and Business Management and eventually returning to the NHS to run a pre-DDA project placing people with Disabilities and Mental Health problems into (meaningful) work.

Collecting another post-grad certificate, this one in Health Service Management, I came across a course-segment on "Personnel" which grabbed my attention and fitted nicely with a whole lot of the stuff I was already doing (and had enjoyed doing for some time), so my appallingly short attention-span dragged me in the direction of a CPP.... and that was it.

That was now 26 years ago. ....and I'm still here!

Probably because we have such a wide-ranging profession with so many things to "get into", so I don't get bored; so many opportunities to exercise real influence, and sometimes "live on the edge" a little too; lots of challenge, lots of times when we can pull rabbits out of hats and rectify problems that other managers find intransigent and/or overwhelming, (o.k: I like showing off sometimes, it comes with the territory for any guitarist), and the really, really good days when someone says "Thanks" because you've helped, or treated them decently and fairly when they thought they were going to be "railroaded", or the MD has just noticed you've saved the company several thousand by resolving some dispute that looked as if it was heading to hit the fan....

Or whatever. 

But perhaps most of all because each day I still learn something new, big or little, and both as a consultant and thorough networking meet (or exchange views on-line with) some really good and clever people who believe in what they're doing (and only ever a few who I would like to sink teeth into).

....and what other profession would have me now I qualify as being a Grumpy Old Man as well? :-)

Peter.

I have to admit I don't think I really knew what HR was.

I did a Law degree at university and graduated in 2008 and was planning to continue down the route of doing my LPC and then a training contract. However, I wanted a break to gain experience and save some money rather than getting myself into further debt. Immediately after graduating, I returned to my previous employer as a summer student and was placed in HR. This is where it all started:

It satisfied my immediate needs in terms of its links to Employment Law and then relished being part of a much larger organisation. Opportunites arose and I threw myself into as many development opportunites as possible. 12 months later I worked my way up to HR Officer in the Employee Relations team now dealing with Change management, redundancies, consultation and negotiation and TUPE and loving every minute. I also started my MSc in HRM and Business at Aston University in September too - which I love.

I am more than happy with the choices I ended up making - I for start have a job unlike many of my fellow Uni students and on a superficial note earning a reasonable graduate wage. I would like to return to Law one day specialising in Employment Law and feel that HR has made me a much more rounded individual.

I agree this is a really great discussion.

Zoe

I didn't fall, I jumped!

I worked for many years as a manager, managing anything/anyone  and wondered in my early thirties what this was good for other than it's own satisfaction and achievement - but wanting to progress myself - somewhere.    I wasn't sure I wanted the next step up operationally.     I then had a particularly negative experience with an HR department who embodied everything that to me that I felt it shouldn't be, ie rules, labelling, power, and metrics as master (mistress?) and decided that the only way I could change this was from within.  So I took various studies, started to understand a bit more what skills and experience I did have that were transferable,  and during this put a proposal in organisationally to make a move into an OD role.  I had three great sponsors that facilitated this in their own ways,  to whom I am eternally grateful.  

You could say that lots of things "happened" after that point, but really it was because I had determined (jumped) I would like to make a difference in my small way to how leaders think about their role and responsibilities and how organisational behaviour is a critical factor in the strategic planning process in terms of determing organisational effectiveness.  

I think in terms of attracting people to HR, I agree with Jackie that it's a well kept secret, endless variety, stimulus and change.   However - in many organisations large and small, there is no HR presence on the board/executive teams - this puzzles me as people issues are the most complex and challenging that leaders have to deal with.  Maybe we should invite some Finance Directors to join the discussion about the HR role.  Meanwhile, back to those who sponsored me to make my move, I needed them to believe in me, encourage me and allow me time off work to study; for those of us who are enthusiasts, this is possibly one of the best way to draw people in. 

I fell into it over a Curry!

I was an Exec Sec for a long time and I had a night out (for said Curry) with a friend and her partner (who happened to be MD of the firm I went to work for).

He asked whether I would be interested in relocating to work for his Company - then just before I joined asked "have you considered venturing into HR".  Hence started in June and ventured into CPP in the Autumn of 2001.

:-)

It was love that did it for me! Not for HR but for my then girlfriend (now wife). We both worked in Marketing and decided that we didn't want to be together 24/7 so I asked 'Personnel' if they could find me another job. For some perverse reason, which I never quite understood, they suggested I join them.

After 17 years in the profession I moved in to business operations management but I just can't get it out of my system and am now trying to move back in to HR. Oh, and we're still married.

After a HRM module at uni, I decided that HR was definitely me. So when I finished I looked for HR roles. Every where I applied for wanted some sort of HR experience. 

So I went into hotels and remember telling my director then, that I wanted to be in HR. A couple of months later I was offered a place in the HR team.

And I have enjoyed every moment to date  

Mira 

I have actually really enjoyed reading these comments about how we "fell into" HR. I particularly love Zoe's sincerity about not knowing what HR was all about.

I started out as a Microbiologist teaching Microbiology to a small number of student midwives, but somewhere along the line, I gained interest in

watching CNN a lot and reading the Economist as this was my dad's favourite magazine.

Here i began to gain interest in business and found that i really wanted to know how

successful businesses such as Microsoft were run.

I enrolled for a degree in Business Management and found special interest in the human resource aspect of it. Am currently studying to gain the CIPD qualification and have been completely overwhelmed by the depth of HRM, and i must say, am truly loving it.

Gosh

Well I started off by doing a degree in Contemporary Music Performance (useful I know) which by the end of the course I'd decided wasn't really for me . Upon graduation my (now) husband and I moved from one end of the country to the other and I fell into a recruitment role for a company that provided a managed service to the local county council.

After a couple of enjoyable (if slightly stressful) years my husbands job took us away from the area and I ended up working alongside him in the hospitality trade. I still got to meet interesting people but I really missed having a role which ticked all my 'job satisfaction' boxes. I had friends who were undertaking their CIPD and after spending time talking to them I decided that HR was where I wanted to be. Unfortunately, as already pointed out further back in this discussion trail, once you are out of the HR environment it can be difficult to get back in.

 So, I went back to basics taking a job as an assistant office manager and working my way upwards. I eventually found a post as office manager which gave me enough HR exposure to apply to my local Uni and start on the pre CIPD course. I had to negotiate the time out the office (a mix of flexi and annual leave) and do a bit of begging to pay for the course via salary sacrifice but its been completely worth it. I've since been promoted to HR manager within a communications group and am due to start a new and (hopefully!) even more exciting post in the next few days. I'll also be completing my Post Grad CIPD course in January 2011.

Its early days still and its been hard work so far but the reward of having an enjoyable, challenging and professional job has been completely worth it.

I sort of fell into HR (although most of my jobs were heavily exposed to one or more aspects of HR) after working for a recruitment agency after college and then some interim general admin roles I ended up working for the HR Manager in a small but growing construction firm and ended up creating a role that solely focussed on HR (after completing the CPP and am now CIPD part-qualified and working my way through the PDS). 

Funnily enough though, at the careers fair at school when I was 14/15 I remember spending a lot of time at the "careers in personnel" stand and possibly in my parents loft somewhere is a whole load of literature regarding HR as a profession!

I think as a profession we should highlight the many paths into HR and that not one prescribed route is best and that the greater the variety we have in our profession the better.

My story is that I did a degree in English and Social Anthropology (remember Maureen Lipman in the BT ads who said you had to have an "ology"??) and knew I didn't want to teach or do journalism.  I opted for a Post-Graduate Management Programme and through it you had to specialise in a specific area of management.  Finance, Operations, Marketing, etc held no appeal, so I was left with HR.  Through the Programme I had to do 2 placements, one of which I loved and one I hated.  Since then I haven't looked back and have been in HR at varying levels ever since from Personnel Clerk in retail through to my current role heading up the HR function in an Accountancy/consultancy Firm, with utilities, public and IT sectors in between.

Some days I really question my sanity - but other days I find it really rewarding, in knowing that the advice and guidance I give protects the company, or helps an individual to think through a situation and make a decision that is right for them.

I love the fact that no two days are the same; but at same time, would love to be able to come in and focus solely on what I want to do.

Would I recommend a career in HR to others?  Absolutely - but like other professions, it doesn't suit everyone.

I went into the HR Dept  from the Fixed Penalty Office in the Magistrate's Courts as someone who could use Microsoft Access, as no one in the HR team could.  Carried on with other bits and pieces then CPP course followed, which helped a lot.