|
Opportunities
HR for Whom?
HUMAN Resource Management is an area that most people can't be in because it is, next to finance, considered to be the fustiest, dreariest place to be in a company.
Those people who look to a career in this field, the brave ones, must be sure of asking themselves why they want to be in this field at all!
Once upon a time HRM consisted of the welfare of the employees within a system. Heads of this department laboured their way through the administrative and facilitative part of the organisation to the post where they were required to tell people like them who were administering and facilitating how to administer and facilitate!
This is the picture many of us have of this department. It's very different now! Today's HR professional is a purpose-trained, people-friendly, bottom-line conscious person with a charm of manner that is the envy of the sales department, and a strategic vision that many CEOs could do with!
If people aim to aspire to these impressive qualities, they need to be sure they have the potential.
How To
Getting into the department is not easy, but it's the natural choice for professionally qualified graduates of business schools.
However, one can't really learn all there is to learn on the subject in a classroom, and certainly lectures and books hardly expose us to a realistic picture of human nature.
What is an absolute must is practical experience and that comes from working in an environment that has the slew of experiences essential to the HR professional.
To do this summer training and experience is an absolute necessity. There are loads of companies ready to offer a temporary (read as unpaid) placement to B-school students so that they can gain on-the-job experience needed to make them employable.
Getting such jobs is not an onerous task, and often nothing more strenuous than a walk-in is required. But to make the experience worthwhile, its well worth the effort to find a company you would like to eventually work in, talk them into offering you an internship, even for a very small stipend, (or none at all!) and get to know the culture and the people with whom you may work with later!
Remember, that companies will be better pleased to hire a face they have seen around, and with whom a great deal of adjustment will not be necessary.
Especially in the people business, getting to know people is a task that is difficult and a head start will always be an advantage!
MTs or Empties?
All those companies that need HR executives generally are on the lookout for two kinds of professionals, sales/marketing and HR.
Usually, the former tend to leapfrog around and find alternate employment and so vacancies always occur.
HR is valued because finding an ideal HR professional is an event to dream about for most institutions.
Companies have finally acknowledged that the happy employee translates to greater productivity and consequently, happier bottom lines!
Your institutional employment assistance office will usually have requests from industry for likely candidates.
Hitching a ride on a corporate bandwagon as a management trainee has more advantages than any other form of employment. Only this will be a good time to demonstrate your seriousness and avoid being branded as `Empties' rather than as MTs!
If the wind drops
What happens if after you begin a career in HR, you discover that the slavish service you have to provide for all the other divisions in the company is not the one for you?
Everything is not lost! A beginning in HR will give you a whole slew of skills that you can use to excellent effect cross-functionally!
In fact it will probably help you to become a better marketer than you would have been if you started your career there!
Similarly can you imagine a people-friendly finance professional?
You will be one if you migrate from line HR to finance!
S. RAMANUJACHARYA
professor1@sify.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Opportunities
|
