What's the entry route to HR Business Partner?

In my opinion, it's a very vague title that in some places means an HR Officer (i.e. someone between an Administrator and Manager in terms of experience and scale of responsibility) and in some places means a very strategic role which partners with a particular area of the organisation.

For context, I've worked in HR for most of the last 20 years at many different levels and never once had that job title, though I have been Personnel Administrator, Assistant School Manager (HR), HR Manager, UK HR Manager, Learning and Development Business Partner, Head of People Development and Director of People!

Acknowledging this isn't very helpful (sorry) I don't think there is a specific route unfortunately. The boundaries between different job levels aren't common across organisations and therefore the way to progress isn't easy to map. My best advice would be to look at the job descriptions and criteria for the jobs that interest you, audit where your skills meet those criteria and make a plan for how to gain the bits that are missing. For me, early in my career, that was a mixture of work shadowing, study, volunteering for projects and briefly being a union rep.

Thanks Gemma, that does help. Those blurred boundaries do help me to understand that it's a role that can mean a lot of different things to different companies. I'm on with my CIPD Level 5 at the minute although I started that simply as a way to formalise what I've learned as a people manager in the last 10 years but that qualification is helping me to find my path too.

Thanks Gemma, that does help. Those blurred boundaries do help me to understand that it's a role that can mean a lot of different things to different companies. I'm on with my CIPD Level 5 at the minute although I started that simply as a way to formalise what I've learned as a people manager in the last 10 years but that qualification is helping me to find my path too.

Best of luck with it all!