How did you get into HR??

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.