Skip to main content
What are the Career Options in Human Resource


HR is not just about liking people. HR isn’t the job for you if you’re not a ‘people person’, but liking people won’t be enough on its own. More precisely, you have to be interested in getting the absolute best out of people.
It’s not just the softer ‘people skills’ that are important. You’ll have a strong interest in business and the strategy that underpins its success. You’ll need a good level of numeracy and analytical skills. Being able to work closely with your colleagues and earn their trust and respect is another critical factor

Each organization is unique and the scope of the HR function adapts accordingly. HR departments often embody the values of their organizations. You should look first for organization whose values you share. Then you can choose between generalist HR positions and a wide variety of specialist roles.

What does a HR generalist do?
When you’re an HR Generalist, variety is the order of the day and you’ll get involved in a wide range of specialist areas. One day, you could be working with management to decide on the people you need to deliver your business strategy. The next, you could be running an employee focus group, getting to grips with the issues that motivate teams. You could even develop a new benefits package or make sure a new HR information system delivers streamlined processes and support.

As an HR Generalist, you may often find yourself supporting – and even challenging – managers as they lead their teams. Your insight into building lasting performance will be a vital tool of your trade.

What does Recruitment /resourcing / talent planning person do?
If you’re working in a recruitment, resourcing and talent-planning role, you’ll need to manage resources (people in the organization) to meet the changing needs of the business and in particular to fulfill the short and long-term requirements of the organization’s strategy. To do this, you need to plan around changing demographics, supply and demand, staff turnover and scarce skills.

You’ll also be responsible for identifying and attracting key people who can create a competitive advantage for the organization. In times of economic uncertainty where recruitment is frozen or limited, this might include keeping talent engaged and interested for when roles arise and developing effective networks of talented individuals that you can tap into cost-effectively.

Additionally, you’ll have an important role in developing processes to identify talent across the organization and integrating them with succession planning and other HR activities such as performance management.

What does a Learning and Talent Development person do?
Getting the best out of people and linking their skills and capabilities drives performance. It can also help people find their strengths and potential. That’s where learning and talent development (L&TD) comes in. L&TD specialists manage learning and potential. In this role, you may deliver activities as diverse as firearms training for police officers and mentoring programmers for fund managers. Or you could be involved in supporting managers in your business to act as a ‘coaches’ to their team.. L&TD specialists But it won’t just be about the delivery of these learning and talent development events. Having the analytical skills to evaluate the benefits to the business will be vital.

Learning and talent development professionals are involved in supporting, developing and accelerating learning in order to build agile and responsive organizations with the capability they need to execute their chosen strategy.

What does an Organization Development Expert do?
Organizations are constantly reinventing themselves. ‘Change-ready’ and agile businesses are best-placed to cope with the challenges of a fast-changing external environment. If you’re involved in organization development (OD), you’ll have a crucial part to play in change management. You’ll also be maintaining the health of the organization in the long term.

The change activities you lead or deliver could be about developing the organization’s culture or the capability of its people. Or they may involve re-organizations and creating more effective and customer-focused processes. You’ll also require a focus on how you communicate with employees. Additionally, you need to paint a picture, not just of what successful change will look like, but the risks and challenges that lie ahead.

Organization development practitioners work in a planned and systematic way – diagnosing issues using relevant data. They consider the whole organization and look to achieve sustained business performance by involving its people.

What is the role of Employee Relations professionals in HR?
Employee relations (ER) professionals have a wide-ranging brief to maintain and develop effective working relationships across the organization. You’ll be looking to create a trust-based culture that drives long-term performance. To do this, you need a good understanding of what drives your organization’s strategy, goals and performance. You’ll also need to speak the ‘language of the business’ and understand how people management drives organization performance.

In practice, the job involves supporting line managers in motivating and engaging the workforce, treating people as individuals and ensuring fair access to opportunities. You may be involved in managing the organization’s relationship with its trade unions and managing workplace conflict. A commitment to diversity and ensuring fairness in the workplace is an important part of employee relations. Another key aspect is supporting effective internal communications inside the organization. Employees will perform best where they have a good understanding of the goals and purpose of the organization. They’ll also be more motivated to deliver when they have the opportunity to feed their views upwards to senior management.

What is the role of Employee Engagement Resources in HR?
Employee engagement can sit alongside responsibilities for areas such as the employer ‘brand’ and internal communication. It also forms an important part of today’s employee relations roles. It’s about understanding what really makes your employees get out of bed in the morning – and what motivates them to go the extra mile when they get to work.

An ability to use quantitative and qualitative information is important. You’ll need to help develop and analyze surveys to measure the attitudes of the workforce and, for example, gauge their understanding of company values or the trust they have in senior management. You’ll also need to sense the ‘mood’ of the business. You might do this through informal and formal means, such as focus groups and workshops, to make connections and share insights with your management colleagues.

Building a successful business depends on making sure people understand and want to deliver the organization’s objectives. Your analysis and advice will be vital here.

What is the role of Performance and Reward Expert in HR?
Performance and reward is about ensuring people’s skills, behaviors, values, attitudes and contribution to the success of their organizations are rewarded and recognized in a fair, market-based and cost-effective way.
You’ll be involved in a wide range of reward activities such as establishing salary levels and allowances and managing pay relativities. You may create incentive and recognition schemes, establish the case for employee benefits, and manage the benefit package and evaluate its effectiveness. This is all part of the organization’s aim to create and sustain a high-performance culture.

As well as being numerate and aware of legal and regulatory requirements, performance and reward specialists need to be able to communicate and educate employees and line managers about the reward strategy; work with colleagues in other departments to create a ‘joined-up ‘total reward’ approach and support people related programmers’ initiatives such as talent and diversity. You will need to identify and manage the risks around pay and benefits. You’ll be able to get involved in government consultations relating to reward. As well as taking part in public policy discussion and consultations on the subject, with issues on your agenda as important as pensions and bonuses, you will also be involved in facilitating senior management discussion around the role of reward.

The beauty of a career in HR is that you get such great insights into all aspects of business.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What are the most frequently asked Behavioral Interview Questions? Behavioral interview questions are a big part of most job interviews. Employers and hiring managers use these types of questions in order to get an idea if you have the skills and competencies needed for the job. The rationale is that if they know how you performed in the past it will help give a sense of how you might do in the future. For you as the candidate, you’ll need to prepare answers (basically “interview stories”) that highlight the different competencies and skill sets the employer is looking for. The problem is most candidates might have a general idea of how to answer these questions, but the answers usually come out way too long and unfocused, and won’t put the candidate in the best light. That’s why you’ll need to make a concerted effort to create these stories and adapt them to the relevant competencies. Below is a list of some common behavioral...
RECRUITMENT IS MARKETING AND BRANDING One of the biggest challenges facing the recruitment sector across the world is the looming skills shortage. Recruitment solutions   are now being tailored and developed to create an effective resource of talent that can be used to fill the skills gap. HR managers are starting to look at recruitment solutions in terms of branding and marketing and this paradigm shift is having the most impact on skills and talent recruiting. Being a “premium employer” is not enough anymore to attract the best talent and new skills into the workforce. Recruitment solutions are more assertive, better planned and use the latest technology and HR software to make a difference. You need to start looking at HR managers who have marketing and branding experience to truly make an impact on your most important resource: your employees. BETTER RECRUITMENT SOLUTIONS ·          Continual recruitment:   recruitm...

How to hire Top Performing Executives for your organization.

How to hire Top Performing Executives for your organization. Employees are not your asset, they are the most valuable asset. Your most valuable asset must perform to ensure that you as an organization are growing. Whether you are Star-up, Growing or Large organization, one of the top most people challenge that today every organization faces is how to attract top performing executives and how do you hire the right talent for the right job to perform right things. Here are some of the ways you can attract and hire top performing executives for your organization. Have a very strong Business Vision to attract the top talent at an Executive level It is very important to have a very strong short term and long term vision of the organization, this helps and gives a lot of confidence to top executives that management team is focused and they know what needs to be achieved in short-term as well as in long-term. Find out your candidates who are growth oriente...