How did you get into HR??

Looks like some of us fell into HR and some did not. Well here is my story - which is slightly different.

I started life as a payroll clerk in the NHS at the tender age of 19, did a HNC in public admin - dabbled in NHS Finance for while and decided it was not for me - and undertook a Diploma in Management Studies - then found that people was my main passion and started my CIPD quals whilst in Finance! Was lucky to get  talent spotted by a HR Director and moved in to HR as Pay & Reward Specialist on secondment - I never looked back - Had a variety of HR roles up to Assistant Director in the NHS - undertook my MA in Strategic HRM - and then met my then partner and moved to where his business was located. Then became a HR Manager in a social housing organisation - big change but lots of potential for development - then promoted to Head of HR and Business Improvement - now following a restructure - HR Lead for the company again and in the process of completing and my second MSc in Leadership at Manchester Metropolitan University and looking for that on last move!

Not bad for someone who is no longer a spring chicken!          

Hi Georgina,

Looking at your 3 questions, I think the following:

• HR has improved it's standing in the workplace over the last few years, but does still get viewed as more of an admin function than a strategic function too often.  HR needs to continue to work hard to prove the strategic value of the function to the business.  By people seeing HR as a positive career choice (which I think we all do here) and a complex and challenging role, contributing to the organisation's success, the brightest and best will want to follow a career in HR - and I think they do already in many cases.

• Agree with David about the key skills.  I have an operational and financial management background, which I dont' regret at all but don't think it shoudl be necessary to have a successful career in HR.  It sort of links to the previous point - as HR becomes viewed more as a career in itself (which I feel is happening now much more so than even 10 - 15 years ago) other managers will respect HR for what they are; with the "dinosaur" managers who see HR as an administrative backwater who are inhibitors rather than partners their attitude is often that HR do not live in the real world.  I think that has helped my career in HR as I have been there and done it.  However, you wouldn't expect a finance professional to have got experience in other function to make a good finance manager - so why so with HR?  I do think a key skill is an interest in people and a way of handling difficult situations with empathy and tact - but achieving the business objectives.  do also agree with the saying "no" bit too - HR mustn't take over from managers - it is their responsibility to manage their team but it is easy to fall into the trap of trying to be helpful and removing that responsibility from them!

• I wish I had thought more about the saying no bit!  Also that most managers don't have very highly developed people skills and are promoted because of their technical ability for the function they are managing.  Think "management" should be seen as a career path in itself - why do we put technically good people into roles they are not good at just because of the career path they need to follow?

Just a few random thoughts!

Peter   

I fully agree with you, Peter !

Why waste the talents of good teachers or doctors or engineers or whatever by making senior one need to become managers ??

The skills required are often totally different and far better undertaken by separate individuals.

Hi Victoria

Its a good questions. I guess a lot of people are learning the benefits and enjoyability of being in such a challenging field, hence they go straight into it.

I actually came into HR after my undergrad degree in psychology and business. It is the only field which combines the two very nicely. I haven't had enough which is why I am going on to pursue a PhD within HR too.

 Its just such a diverse field and branches out into many other fields. It is the core of an organisation, afterall.

Really interesting stories to read because at the CIPD we have project running right now, to understand how to make sure we attract the very  best people into HR and how to make it a competitive career destination of choice. 

Many of us who slipped or fell into it - as I did also - discover when we get there, that we wouldn't want to be doing anything else.  I'd say HR is still  a well kept career secret - one that I'd like to shout a lot more from the rooftops, to people at every stage of their career.  How to capture the essence of an HR career - in a way that captures its unique contribution to both organisational and individual growth?  Any thoughts?

 And we still want those who fall.  My interest after graduating was in supporting people get into employment - growing up in the 80s left me clear that unemploment was a social and economic blight.  So I started at the Dept of Employment (as it was called then) and took a couple of employment related turns to find myself a few years later in HR.  It's been a fascinating journey.

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.