Career Wise : Starting your career in HR

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Career Wise – Taking the first steps in becoming a HR professional


Oxford English Dictionary defines career as an individual's "course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life). The origin of the word though comes from a negative connotation like “Rat Race”; these days career defines an individual. It is all about jobs, education, professional growth and learning, social status, and is related to one’s existence in the social set up. I am writing this column on how one can manage a career in the field of Human Resource Management. From beginning of a career in this field to hanging up one’s boots my understanding speaks of this as an interesting, engaging, and exciting profession to be in. In the course of this column I will try to take you through how can one develop and probably become a successful professional with comments and examples from industry experts, veterans, and role models.

I had a discussion with the students at IMT Nagpur who were in their second year and planning to take up various professional streams as part of their career. Many of them had interest in HR and I asked them to share their thoughts on why they choose HR and some of their concerns. The class discussion on HR as a career option covered various areas such as, streams in which HR career can be developed, various competencies required for the same, what are the aspects of a HR job that students like, what are the negatives of HR as a career option. Some of the streams that they were aware of were Recruitment, Training and Development, Employee Relations and IR, Performance Management, Generalist HR, and HR consulting.

As a HR professional, some of the behavioral aspects and competencies they thought were critical are, understanding of human behavior, getting well along with the people, good communication skills, and empathy. Students wanted to go for a HR job due to the following characteristics of a HR job as it involves great deal of socializing, understanding people and their behaviors, helping in the growth and development of the human resources of the organization, and aiding the individuals in improving their performance through motivation. They also pointed out some very interesting drawbacks of HR job as per their understanding. They felt that HR jobs are paid low, in the initial years the individuals are offered functions wherein there is high level of monotony involved, and less autonomy in the initial years of the job.

As a practicing HR professional myself, I feel it is a great field one can be in and if you are in the right direction gives you multitude of challenges, growth and of course good compensation. There have been a lot of thoughts about this field and discussions in research, conferences, and within practitioner communities how HR should evolve and how HR professionals should be. The first thing to note is HR is not a profession per se where the entry is restricted by a professional degree or institute which governs its work ethos or regulates.

This by means does not give monopoly of practice to a few who have those affiliations like that of lawyers or chartered accountants. A variety of people have also come into this field and added to its complexity and beauty as well. We have psychologists, sociologists, training professionals from various fields, management experts who typically have an MBA or experts from various fields who are part of HR fraternity. In recent years MBAs from various institutes have started playing a major role in the field and have also brought more business alignment to the function. Nevertheless to get started in this field and grow to be a significant business contributor one needs to have certain competencies and formal training.

Like in any function or job that one takes up, a good start and the first stint makes a lot difference. One thing that is mostly coming out from experience and experts is that HR as a choice of function to enter today is equally good or better than some other functions on certain occasions. Visty Banaji, who is the CEO of Banner Consulting, former Executive Director and President (Group Corporate Affairs) Godrej Industries where he was handling HR as well, puts it this way: “Broadly yes (HR as a career has equal growth as in other functions) , though there will always be on one or two functions in an organization which enjoy accelerated growth either because they (i) contain the core competencies essential for the company's strategic success, (ii) there is a high market demand for the professionals staffing it, (iii) they have a powerful leader or (iv) some other reason. For one of these reasons, growth in HR can also outstrip that in other functions.”

He also mentions from his experience and being a consultant to many organizations that to be a successful HR professional “some of the competencies which emerge in most situations are: (i) The capacity to elicit trust from line managers, employees and HR colleagues, (ii) Frugal innovation and (iii) The ability to reason from behavioral science first principles”. From the recent thought processes on HR, it is critical that HR professionals are able to connect with business and partner in its success. It requires considerable appreciation of business, align HR principles and processes for business growth, make sure talent is managed to deliver, and being a catalyst for change required on the people front to ensure business delivery.

Second aspect is being a source of support to employees and being an advocate of their requirements. Another critical aspect is being an administrative expert – meaning to ensure processes are effective, maintain timelines, and are of high quality. Looking from this angle, a person taking up a job in HR – essentially somebody starting with HR Training should be looking at getting exposure to the larger organization, having a nice mentor to support, and in couple of years developing hands on experience in as many areas in HR, and grooming oneself to be an effective influencer. The starting point should give as much broad exposure as possible for somebody to look at a long term career in HR and choose what best suits him/her.

Interestingly people who have deep understanding of the job market do agree that HR is a field that is becoming more critical in businesses and finding a good HR person is a difficult job. Srimanto Bhattacharya, Partner, Spearhead Intersearch, which is a global executive search firm, comments that nowadays HR is playing a role which is making business deliver. HR person on board is the strategist who puts forth the people angle of business and ensuring profitability and sustainability. Startups, mid size or large functions are always looking at good HR people. Functions like industrial relations are critical and lack of proper management of it can question business existence. Hands on implementation experiences of critical HR functions are what one should gain in the initial years. Interestingly Bhattacharya comments, “Building your organization without proper HR inputs is like Indian traffic. We will have people coming for all sides and it would be just chaos”.

According to Anand Mutalik, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Solutions at Acropetal Technologies, a new HR professional should not leave out the Human Research aspect. He/She should understand what engages employees, use principles from his/her learning to devise mechanisms to drive it, and create processes and practices so that they become integral part of the organization.

Many forward looking organizations have developed their own modules to prepare fresh talent coming from management institutes to be groomed as HR professionals. As a person getting started in the field, it is critical that academic knowledge is blended with practical exposure and a broad one will be more helpful. In their famous book on “HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy and Performance”, authors – Becker, Huselid, and Ulrich speak about multiple competencies one needs to build up in the formative years as a HR professional. The five critical competencies are personal credibility, ability to manage change, ability to manage culture, delivery of HR practices, and understanding of the business. For a budding HR professional he/she needs to undergo practical exposure at different levels in recruitment, performance management, compensation, employee relations / IR, training and development, community and government relations. For example in the year one if someone is getting trained in basic interviewing, using recruitment software, preparing job descriptions to short listing and working with staffing consultants, by a fourth year he/she should be having to work in leadership hiring processes, hiring plan formulation, interviewing to closures, employer branding initiatives, and taking hiring decision including compensation. Similar trend will be in all functions which will bring a HR professional closer to understanding business. From a development perspective it is useful to have assignments that are special projects like setting up an SBU, solving an attrition issue, getting involved in consulting assignments, exposure to different cultural or national issues, and having mentors from specialization in HR or business. Appreciation across functions is also critical if one needs to support them efficiently.

To sum up, HR is a field that is growing and has immense potential in building organizations and business. It is now an integral part of any business and interestingly for a newcomer it throws up a lot of new challenges. It is up to the individual to seize the opportunity and be proactive in the initial years in having multitude of exposure, right entry, and early success.

Article By
Dr. Sandeep K. Krishnan,
vice president, HR and corporate development,
Acropetal Technologies

(www.humanedgemagazine.com)