A reader asks —
I hope I am not bothering but I just had a few questions about HR as a career. I am currently thinking about changing careers and HR management is one that I have been seriously thinking of. I was just wondering if you would suggest HR as a career? What are the pros and cons of working in HR? Any advice would be great.
How would you advise this woman? Would you recommend a career in Human Resources? Pros and cons? Thoughts?
I’ll give out a $25 gift card to the best advisor.
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I’d need to know your motivations before advising you to go for it. If you are wanting to be in HR because you’re a touchy-feely person, then I wouldn’t advise it. Alternatives for that personality type abound. If it’s because you want to be in business making strategic decisions to solve workplace problems, we would love to have you.
Any chance of getting replies from her, Laurie? I’d like to know the motivations…
One of the pros as quoted from an Organizational Development co-worker “there are no OD emergencies”….or that may be a con if you like the action of a crisis.
I would advise her to think of it as a career in babysiting. I hold hands when people get boo-boos, give them time outs and sometimes have to send them home. You also must have a high tolerence for crying, fighting and cleaning up messes.
I think the pros and cons depends on the company where you go into HR. Does that company allow HR to make strategic decisions in regards to recruiting and retention? or do they just have to so what non-HR management says? I have been at both and the pros and cons are very different. Even in upper level HR Management a position will become focused on one of the specialties of HR. Does she want to remain a generalist or work more with benefits, recruiting, etc? That makes a difference in the pros and cons too. I agree with Ben in that I would like to know her reasons for wanting a career change to HR and we could tell her if those are valid reasons.
Here’s the deal: is it the field you feel you can make the most scratch in? At the end of the day we work, not for some higher altruistic reason, but because we have a contract with our employers that we will exchange our knowledge and effort for their dollars. If you think that your skills will not allow you to a greater exchange in another field, then by all means capitalize on your skill set and run to HR, if on the other hand you feel that you have a higher value elsewhere, then do that. If you are making this career change and are currently are at a managment level and want to transition at an HR manager level, please be aware that you would becoming in beneath the experience curve, and that may automatically put you under the dollar curve as well.
Props Laurie for you talk yesterday! I listened last night, good stuff and I love a good f-bomb!
Advice I wished I would have had:
HR can be exciting and challenging— making business decisions that impact the future of the workplace. It can make you feel like a vital part of the organization and create a sense of accomplishment. That’s on a good day…….
On the flip side: There are many days that you feel like someone’s admin assistant, nurse, counselor, mother, and babysitter. The reality is it can be frustrating and can make you jaded (if you let it).
HR is not always what it appears to be and you have to take the good and use it to help counter-act the bad. If you can find that balance (and for me that took a couple years), then HR can be a great career to explore. But whatever you do, you have to do it like a rock star….
Is this person willing to take some classes/continuing education in order to learn the basiscs of HR?
We staff HR openings at my agency and I often get calls from folks interested in HR because they’re a “people person”. They didn’t even know that most entry-level positions (and that’s where they would most likely have to start) involve filing papers in the “right place” or advising employees how to do the “right thing” in most cases. And to know the “right place” for the file or how to counsel people in accordance to the law, they need some basic education on state and federal guidelines… Once they find out that those first few years in the field require some education and effort, it weeds out those who are interested because they think they can step right into a Director role or leading a training class.
Of course there are some awesome opportunities in our field to go beyond the paper-pushing side of HR (duh! it’s why i’m now a recruiter…and hope to do something new in a few years!), but that often takes a few years of experience doing the crap jobs. In order to be a true “expert” and have the ability to move on to bigger and better opportunities, it’s going to take some time and genuine interest in learning the in’s and out’s of HR.
Those who are willing and excited to learn more about this particular field (or any field for that matter!) are much more likely to be successful.
Am I a total purist here?
I think she should just read this: http://www.yourhrguy.com/2009/06/09/love-helping-people-dont-go-into-hr/
Dear “I want to be in HR.”
How shall I approach this? For starters, I must preface what I write by saying this is my experience. I may be a freak. I may have been lucky so far. I may be delusional. But just like the endless grains of sand, young Weed-Hopper, so are the many paths to, within, and presumably out of Human Resources.
Perhaps a short list of some pros and cons.
I’ll start with the Cons so I can end on a positive note (HR tactic).
CONS
-You will sometimes not be invited to management meetings where HR items are being discussed and decided upon. This will be very frustrating and often give you cause to question the intelligence of your senior management team, or at least the Big Leader of that team (Often, less powerful senior-leaders will, in fact, commiserate with HR and see your “value” but they are frequently ineffective in acting on this in the face of the BIG Leader, who is oblivious).
-You will have to beat back the 1970s notion of “personnel management.” Some Boomers still cling to this and will see you as the Commissioner of Parties and ask you to step aside when real work surfaces. Such dinosaurs still exists, and often are VPs, and your fate is to deal with them and add value to your organization despite them, or sometimes, to spite them.
-You will constantly be fixing things, and writing things, and researching things, where the credit will go so someone other than yourself, likely your boss. Suck it up. Big fish eat little fish, be glad you have a job, and try to become a big fish.
-You will be associated with people losing their jobs because you will have to fire people. Sometimes, when it is the Mean Guy who left horrifically scary death threats on a coworkers cell phone, it will be easy (although I did have to call the Police department to be there, I evacuated the building, and I had the location manager and a mechanic with me to take the guy down should he go crazy on us during the term). Other times, when it is a reduction of force, or a location closure, where people are losing their jobs in a much more innocent way…it is very, very hard. This ex-Marine has been in tears on more than one occasion when having to lead such terminations.
-You will often be overburdened with work and without sufficient resources but this is the case for most any professional so you cannot dwell on the matter nor complain. Suck it up.
PROS
-You can effect change. I have taken every executive leader I have worked with out for the Moment of Truth speech. This is where we have a beer, and I say: “I can work better for you and help move things forward if you let me do my job” (Usually there is a fair amount of profanity involved as this makes me seem serious and relatable during these sessions). Once I have the Big Leader on board, I can now start working for positive change.
-You can be a Leader in your organization. People want and need to see someone in management leading, and you will have many opportunities to do this, if you take them!
-You can really add to the business. You can help develop talent, you can help develop culture, you can help improve productivity, you can help with matters of parity and fairness, you can do a lot of positive social-construct type stuff, and not just so the world is a frickin better place, but so your company makes money. Thereby, you make money. You get a company car. You get a bonus. You get restricted stock. Etc.
-You will be a Mutt, not a Thoroughbred, and that is okay. A good HR Person is a mix of many things: One part Coach, one part Attorney, one part Priest, one part Detective, one part Counselor, one part Politician, etc. I like wearing these different hats, keeps the job fresh.
-Yes, something new every day.
In the end, young Weed-Hopper, there are many good and rewarding aspects of being an HR practitioner. For me, at least. I’ve never wanted to be the Sales Guy. Certainly not the Accountant. I lack the knowledge to be the IT Person. I could manage people and be a general manager, but I lack the subject matter expertise of landscaping, or grocery stores, or tire outlets, etc., so being the manager who manages operations could be a stretch…but I think I could do that.
But I like HR. I like being a Generalist especially. Please do not pigeon-hole me in Benefits or Payroll or some other straight line function! Let me be a Generalist, free to dabble in it all. It is a good career, and I have no regrets. Well, one maybe. I should have gone to law school and become a lawyer. Lawyers get it all…Arrggh! What was I thinking?
Yours faithfully,
Dale
Dale Dickenson, M.Ed.
Senior Professional in Human Resources
Ben asked the best question…because HR is a people-watcher’s job, not a people-lover’s job.
I disagree that it’s about babysitting. I was a babysitter in my first HR management job, and that’s because I was an idiot. The managers are the babysitters, not me. Once I figured that out, I was a whole lot more successful in my HR career. I advise the managers, and they either take the advice or they don’t. But I’m nobody’s mommy (not at work anyway).
For me, the pros of going into HR were:
1. Interesting work. I was never bored. There’s tons to learn—you really can’t live long enough to learn it all.
2. Great people-watching opportunities. You know the inside scoop, and you see what makes people tick. It’s fascinating.
3. A chance to make a company successful. When I did well, I could really see the impact my work had (although it took years to get to the level where that was possible). I liked that.
4. At higher levels, the money can be good.
The cons:
1. You’re going to live in carpetland. You’ll spend most of your days in grey offices and grey conference rooms, looking at PowerPoint slides and listening to people say “utilize” instead of “use.” There’s a bit less of this in manufacturing, but if you go into manufacturing, you’ll run into the poopwriters (people who write nasty things about the company on the walls of the bathroom, using poop as crayons). I hate conference rooms, I hate “utilize,” and I hate poopwriters, so that got old for me.
2. You get blamed for stuff, but you don’t have the power to fix it. For example, candidates blame you for not calling them for an interview and leaving an opening sit open for months…but you can’t get the hiring manager to get off his ass and look at the resumes to see who he wants to bring in. It can be frustrating. In fact, if you need everyone to like you and never talk smack about you, avoid HR like the plague.
3. You have to work with other HR people. Some of them suck. My most frustrating coworkers were almost always fellow HR people…the kind who like rules, and forms, and think employee manuals with policies about what color your toenail polish can be, and telling people “no you can’t do that,” and complaining that no one takes them seriously. Bah. I don’t miss those people.
4. It’s highly competitive right now. Because companies have let employees go, they’ve needed fewer HR people…so there are lots of unemployed HR folks out there right now. You’re competing with experienced people for entry level positions. It used to be that recruiting was a good way to break in, but right now recruiting is (obviously) not so good either.
Bottom line—I spent 14 years in HR. I had fun. I’m glad I did it, but now I’m ready for the next thing.
I’d say this is a tie for Kerry and Dale so far.
Dale brings up a bunch of good points I forgot, especially about people associating you with their job loss. I still have LOTS of people pissed off at me, from as far back as a decade ago (I know, because they find me on my blog and try to start drama). I had to get a restraining order for one of them. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen.
It depends on what your changing careers from. Are you in a meaningless at times, ambiguous role where what you do sometimes is important and visible but most of the time is taken for granted? of are you used to driving and seeing direct results of your contributions?
If you like seeing the direct results of your contributions AND you can assert yourself (calmly) in a variety of situations, you might succeed. If your more likely to roll over and put up with your company peers and leaders making decisions for you, and you’re okay with it? That could work too.
Every HR Exec I respect has the personal style to make a difference without asking permission to do so and they’ve managed their career by selective choosing only those opportunities where HR already is a respected position.
If you do decide to pursue it, specialization is away to go… comp and benefits, employee relations, recruiting. Be a needed expert and you maybe happy too.
The variety of responses tells you the fundamental question, which was asked in the very first comment:Get clear on your purpose in making that choice. Yep, you can get into HR and make a career out of babysitting, holding hands, solving insurance dilemmas and so forth. Anf mor many that can be a satisfying career, and I applaud them. But Ben pointed to the other end of the spectrum. You might want to choose a specialty (compensation, labor, benefits…) or environment (union, non-union, professional…) that most suits you.
My Advice: Know thyself, and follow your heart. Your mind will follow.
oops, right in the middle that should be “and for many that can be a satisfying career”
Ditto to everything Kerry and Dale said. Wish I’d said it myself, but they said it better.
The 2-cents I will add: My Pro:
I have always been a generalist, and I think that has enabled me to have a fairly portable skill set, allowing me to have exposure to many different industries, and add to my bag of tricks along the way. The money indeed can be pretty decent, if you’re smart about what you learn and where you work.
My “con”, or it could be for some people, is that you know a lot of things that are hard to know. Who’s getting fired, who tested positive on a drug test, who got a terrible evaluation, who makes way the f too much money. That kind of knowledge can seem cool, but it takes a special skill to have that knowledge and just treat it as a detail.
And most days, I hate people.
(not really, but DON’T go into HR because you “like” people. Big mistake!!)
Okay, in the spirit of a healthy discourse [and what my wife says is my miserable desire to win], here is a smidge more story. I am going to reference my first week in a new regional HR role I had, in Los Angeles, quite a few years ago. This story is what I have come to refer to as The Roper, The Groper, and The Smoker.
The Roper
I was driving from Corona to Anaheim on the 91 Express Way when a truck with our company logo on it flies by me doing crazy speed. “Who the hell is that?” I thought. So what do I do? Toss all caution and maturity out the window and throw the peddle to the floor, of course. I TRY to keep up, but the SOB is going so fast all I can do is count on slower traffic, up ahead, to keep things in check. 17 miles later, in Santa Ana, I pull into the location where the truck is parked. I get the branch manager, I get the driver, we go over his speeding etc. Here is the kicker…the truck is full of rodeo equipment. I mean grooming products for horses, saddles, whips, blankets, special horse oils, it was insane. Seems the driver was doing side work and recreation with the truck, and that all came to an end. Employee was terminated.
The Groper
I get a call from a furious property manager that one of our employees has grabbed his female employee’s, how shall I say this, “front section.” Our employee (a landscaper) was being shown around a property by this person, in a golf cart, when he leaped upon her and started pawing her. She slugged him, he rolled out of the golf cart, and she sped off. When I questioned the employee as to why on earth he would do this, he looked up at me, shrugged, and said: “But she was so beautiful!” Fired him on the spot.
The Smoker
I was called up to Magic Mountain, you know the place with kids and rides and more kids? Our employee was weedwhacking the side of a hill, looking up at a roller coaster, and just standing there. Problem was, he had put his tools down and was smoking huge amounts of marijuana out of a purple bong (Yes, I see the double entendre of weed-whacking and weed smoking). So there he was…smoking, watching the roller coaster, having a nice day, I suppose. Parents were not too happy. I show up, ask the employee what in the world he was thinking, and he says: “I found the stuff.” I explain that I am puzzled how someone finds a purple bong, full of water and dope, and then happens to pick it up, light up, and stand there for God, Country, and Corps to see. Fired him, too.
There you go…first week in new job, three rather eventful days in HR. Spent 4 years in that job…sort of like dog years. Probably the equivalent of 12 years in Boise!
Be good.
Dale
Congratulations for researching a potential career move before jumping right into it (or falling right into it)!
HR is a large, expansive, vast industry that attracts many different types of candidates for different reasons. What areas of HR initially interested you? What type of work do you generally prefer? Opportunities abound:
-do you prefer to be hands-on, working in the field, visiting different job sites or at a desk almost all day, thank you very much?
-are you a number crunching, statistics, junky or I’d rather stick with reading the most recent case law, thanks again?
-do get a thrill out of navigating difficult, potentially litigious situations between people or perhaps negotiating your head off with large employee groups excites you more?
-do you enjoy tapping into your network to connect people with awesome jobs, or setting up benefits and comp packages that meet strategic goals while complying with applicable regulation?
-or maybe just managing gigantic databases and HRIS systems are up your ally, or setting up employee orientations and online onboarding will do just fine.
In this industry, size matters: A large company will have a department dedicated to workers compensation where you can specialize…at a smaller shop, you’ll be wearing many different hats and will be forced to generalize.
A new career can be daunting, but that doesn’t mean a career shift will start you off at the reception desk. You have skills–which ones can you transfer? Do a serious assessement–understand why you are looking to change careers so you don’t find yourself in the same job in a different department.
In the meantime, keep checking in on HR blogs, consider taking a course at your local college, or stop in at the next local SHRM chapter meeting and see where the interest takes you. During your quest, don’t forget to check out salary data…you don’t want to find out after you spent $40,000 on that degree that the position you wanted caps out at $35,000–while we can’t predict future earnings capabilities in any field, you can at least rule out any undesirable surprises.
As with any career move, I only recommend the career move if it feels right for YOU. And when you know, nothing will stop you from getting all the knowledge you can to master your field.
To Ms. A. Reader:
Wanna be in HR? Then you need to ask yourself the following questions:
Could you treat the people who would genuinely seek out your advice with dismissive condescension, regarding them as pathetic, time-wasting losers who need to be baby-sat?
Deep down, would you be happy to act randomly on the pretence of having a plan, knowing that your decisions will adversely affect the work and lives of those you have to deal with?
Are you completely devoid of a sense of humour, politically correct, insufferably arrogant and nauseatingly smug?
Would you be comfortable with being widely detested and regarded as completely incompetent and untrustworthy by anyone who is not a fellow HR professional and who is not otherwise completely naïve?
Are you fundamentally lazy and/or otherwise lacking in any professionally marketable skills such as engineering, science or IT?
Do you delight in making negative judgements about others based on gossip, hearsay and the opinions of those with a hidden agenda or an axe to grind?
Are you incapable of keeping personal information about others to yourself?
Would you be able to kid yourself that firing good people to make cost-savings as a result of your company’s knee-jerk, corporate incompetence is a sad but inevitable consequence of modern-day business?
Would you take a secret pride in yourself when you hand over that pink slip to a soon-to-be-destitute family man, thinking it was a job well done?
Would you be proud to build a career by appearing to be a passionate cheerleader and energetic enforcer for the endless waves of moronic initiatives and reorganisations that always precede the downsizing exercises above?
Do you set your moral compass by whatever your boss tells you is company policy?
Then yes sirree, big corporate HR is truly the career for you.
And no, I have no particular axe to grind with all you HR professionals out there. If you feel offended, then you shouldn’t be, as I am clearly writing about somebody else.
These are just my observations, based on many years of sorry experience of HR’s overall impact upon those around me and the constantly dashed hope that someone, somewhere will make the HR function into the force for good that it could be.
Those who do not have most (if not all) of the above traits will soon become bitterly disillusioned with HR as a career, and will leave it for teaching, welfare, local government or charity work.
Pharma–holy crap dude, you need some ice cream, like, immediately.
I’m fascinated by the advice to be a generalist versus to specialize. I am maybe a little strange in that I did both: I started in recruiting, then was a generalist, then moved back to recruiting, then back to generalist work…back and forth, all along the way. I did so partly because I didn’t want to be easily labeled, partly to make sure I could market myself more than one way, and partly to avoid boredom/burnout. It worked for me.
I feel like this is a trick question. I did not study traditional HRM, but rather got into the field via conflict resolution. Frankly the HRM stuff in my post graduate studies bored the heck out of me and now 10 years later, I feel the same way.
The way I see it, no company really needs an HR department if you accomplish the goals of the strategic HR model. If you educate the people in other functions, they can do most activities blindfolded after a while. HR only has some clout in larger organizations, but Finance as a staff function will always be king. And Finance people usually think they can do HR too, so there is not really a need for HR folks. So I guess, working with an outsourced HR contractor for transactional work would be an idea, but you would just be answering phones and pushing paper. After a few years, you will realize that you are nothing more than a trained monkey.
I have found that I dislike most of the HR folks I work with. They are not problem solvers, they just like to talk and feel like they have power.
Before anyone decides to go into HR, they should really read that article from few years ago titled “Why We Hate HR” When I read that article for the first time, I laughed and laughed and laughed. Most HR people blow hot wind. And HR consultants are the biggest hustlers you will meet.
Notwithstanding, if you find a spot where you are a respected business partner then it can be a lot of fun. But those opportunities are far and few.
Also – if you have ideals, then it might not be the best career. But again, like a few others wrote, a lot has to do with what kind of organization you join. And if you have ethics, avoid small organizations where morals and laws are bent everyday.
If you like people Don’t go into HR
If you like acclaim. Don’t go into HR
If you like black and white. Don’t go into HR
If you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,
If you can find a solution but take no reward and receive the blame with no responsibility,
If you can do the hard yards for minimal gain…..
You might just have a career.
Wow. We’re a really disgruntled group.
Perhaps we ALL need ice cream.
@ Kerry Ice cream… And cake! You’ve been spending a lot of time with the kids all right.
per @pharma “Are you completely devoid of a sense of humour, politically correct, insufferably arrogant and nauseatingly smug?”
Sad to say.. I have worked with my share of fellow-hr folks who fit this description to a “T” Until I’ve gotten in there and whooped them up some.
Then again, take a walk across the hall to Accounting, and its THEIR picture that’s in the dictionary next to this description.
I was like this long before the kids. I am a lifelong ice cream-o-phile. I doubt I would have survived HR long without the entire frozen dairy genre.
@ Kerry My wife keeps trying to get me to take her small fridge to work. I’ll have to get some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream if the fridge is going to be worth the moving effort.
HR as a career. Go with it! If you enjoy working with people and keeping the people gears of a company turning in the right direction, then you will have a fulfilling human resources career.
Of course, there are always frustrations in any career and Human Resources is certainly not exempt from that. I think some of the frustrations can come when you move into a more strategic position but find that those at the executive level are not very interested in the people and organizational strategy. Choose your company and industry carefully. Secondly, learn the business to build credibility with those executive team members. Give it a few years and you might find yourself at the table with them.
I work in a very strategic position overseeing talent acquisition and talent management. It has been very fulfilling and I feel like what we do and what my team does in HR makes a difference. I think that is what most people want from any career. Oh, and of course, the pay check helps, too.
Pro’s: if your good at it and work for a good organization,you can make a difference by providing services and support that help people succeed. Doesn’t matter your area or # of yrs…just the fact that you can make a difference.
The cons: you need a thick skin, you have to deal with people and situations that are difficult, sometimes unfair, and you can feel pretty lousy at the end of the day..
thats the cliff note version, good luck with oyur decision. Rember if you fail or don’t like it you can try something else…
L, did I win the gift certificate???
M
PS if you can spell you have a long future in HR
And one more thing (if you still would choose HR after this expose today!):
Act aloof and as though you would rather be in another area. Everyone will think you have the HR part down cold and give you even more HR opportunity.
Wow, these are all interesting comments—funny, biting, honest, and a good assessment of how HR practitioners feel about their own field.
I’ll announce a winner on Wednesday afternoon. I need to get to bed!
The biggest con of working in HR is that it’s a paper mill. If you don’t mind paper being thrown at you all day, then perhaps HR is for you. Also, if you don’t mind fielding moronic questions, then again HR might be for you.
It has some major benefits too. If you enjoy working with people and helping them along (sometimes holding a hand or two), go for it.
It’s better than working for a living.
If you like having to set the right example at all times, always follow the rules/laws no matter the situation, feel stressed out more days than not, and be the taddle tale on your coworkers – HR is the career for you, my friend!
*** OKAY I PICKED A WINNER. ANNOUNCEMENT SOON. ***