Hi Chloe your experience is very valuable, my advice is to revisit your cv and make it skill based, focusing on your ER experiences as opposed to sales turnovers, targets met etc I wish you every success!

Hi Chloe,

You have great transferable skills and now the qualification to be successful. As Gianna says, make sure your CV is HR focussed rather than retail focussed, list all of the HR duties that you did and add in assisted with for ones that you only dabbled in. That said, don't ignore the leadership aspect of your role as you will need to be able to demonstrate aspects (coaching, teambuilding, talent management, difficult conversations etc) in your HR role too.

I would be looking for entry level roles, HR Admin/assistant, depending on your current organisation the pay cut may not be as drastic as you imagine. When it comes to interviews, make sure you highlight that you have the unique perspective of seeing HR from the other side so you are very well placed to understand the needs of managers after being in that position, and you can understand/sympathise with the challenges they face when it comes to their people needs.

Prepare to submit lots of applications, don't get disheartened if you don't hear back or it takes a while to secure an interview. Keep plugging away and you will eventually get your breakthrough.

Good luck, keep us updated.

Hey Chloe,

I transitioned from 10-12 years of retail management experience into HR, I'm the HRD of an SME now 3 years later.

Speaking openly here, you will crush it once you get into a role. The grit, guts and commercial awareness that retailers bring into a HR role is incredibly valuable.

Graham's advice has merit but I respectfully don't agree with it. I would be looking for a Junior HRBP role instead, or a fully fledged HRBP within the retail industry. It would play to all of your strengths and you'll still be exposed to challenges that you will need to go away and do a bit of research on, developing yourself.

I think entering an admin of role of any kind would be a waste of the skills you've built up.

In reply to Charles:

You raise some good points Charles. Speaking from my own experience, when I transitioned into HR after a long career in retail management, I personally wouldn’t have felt ready to step straight into an HRBP role, even with my level 5. There were just so many elements to HR that I wasn’t fully familiar with to enable me to operate on that level.

That said, I’m someone who likes to really understand every aspect of a role, so I’ve always preferred working my way through different positions to get a full understanding. But I know everyone’s career path is different and it’s not a one size fits all.

It’s interesting to read about the journey of others from similar backgrounds.