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I am thinking about changing my career path to HR. Does anyone here have an HR job? Is the pay competitive? Are you liked in the workplace? Why are there so many young people in HR (21 -30 crowd)?
I am thinking about changing my career path to HR. Does anyone here have an HR job? Is the pay competitive? Are you liked in the workplace? Why are there so many young people in HR (21 -30 crowd)?
Human Resources is full of pretty young girls with no training in the field. Many organizations believe that there is no need for someone to be educated or professioonally certified as long as they are good with people and look the part. In recent years it seems like the field is dominated by young women with limited business skills and as a result many people have no respect for the typical HR Person. It is really hard to get a job in HR because there are so many applicants and many HR jobs are cut or oursourced in an attempt to save money.
I work in an HR dept....not as a recruiter, but as a secretary (admin assist...same thing)...and make as much as the recruiters! Only qualification for recruiters is a college degree (in anything from basket weaving to whatever), and an outgoing personality....and in many cases, a cut-throat attitude since it's very competitive in hiring the right applicants.
What I have heard way too often from recruiters is that they are underpaid (agree!), and they are not respected by upper mgmt. Why do they stay in those positions? Because most of them don't have that much work to do and can play a lot during the day (in our company anyway).
Oh, and it's true that a lot of recruiters enjoy the feeling of power they have over applicants.
Katie I have been a coordinator such as you and made the move to sourcing/recruiting. If your full time recruiters make under 6figures they do not know their trade or are handling very basic positions in field recruiting.
Weaving basket degree and outgoing personality do not make a recruiter. To work upper level or management positions you need to know the industry, have connections, people skills, be very familiar with the legal side of recruiting/HR and have lots of patience. Patience with hiring managers, potential candidates and your support staff. You have to work both sides of the fence by assisting in-house with market intelligence, while finding the perfect fit for the job. Most of the successful ones I have met come from management positions, added an HR certification to their credentials, work hard and play hard but know when to.
Katie I have been a coordinator such as you and made the move to sourcing/recruiting. If your full time recruiters make under 6figures they do not know their trade or are handling very basic positions in field recruiting.
Weaving basket degree and outgoing personality do not make a recruiter. To work upper level or management positions you need to know the industry, have connections, people skills, be very familiar with the legal side of recruiting/HR and have lots of patience. Patience with hiring managers, potential candidates and your support staff. You have to work both sides of the fence by assisting in-house with market intelligence, while finding the perfect fit for the job. Most of the successful ones I have met come from management positions, added an HR certification to their credentials, work hard and play hard but know when to.
Ideally this is how it should be, but in reality it is not. At least it has not been my experience. I work for a large company and the HR department is full of the pretty young things who are more interested in how they look and what each other are wearing than doing their jobs. They are very unprofessional with the recruits as well like snickering about their shoes or dress. I feel that I would enjoy an HR position if it were the job you described above, but it is not so at my company. I wanted to get information from others to see if my company was just different, or if this is the norm for HR workers. I wish our company was like you described.
Ideally this is how it should be, but in reality it is not. At least it has not been my experience. I work for a large company and the HR department is full of the pretty young things who are more interested in how they look and what each other are wearing than doing their jobs. They are very unprofessional with the recruits as well like snickering about their shoes or dress. I feel that I would enjoy an HR position if it were the job you described above, but it is not so at my company. I wanted to get information from others to see if my company was just different, or if this is the norm for HR workers. I wish our company was like you described.
Being unprofessional when dealing with a 250k candidate is absolutely unthinkable; with 100% commission fellow it would have sent our manager into rage.
You run into the 20s giggle sisters where ever you go - educate them, train them, teach them how to think, give them challenges, put them on a bonus plan:>)
It's sad, but trying to train the 20s giggle sisters is somewhat if a challenge. They feel as if they have "arrived" being a good-looking college graduate given a 35k recruiting job. They feel as if they are on top of the world and need no further training. They look at the "dinosaurs" in the office (the 30 and 40 year olds) as old and out of touch with life in general. The sad part is that these young girls haven't even begun their lives. They are still enjoying the partying and dating scene from college with the most devastating event being that their VCR did not record "Grey's Anatomy" while they were "out last night". What a tragedy! This is my experience with HR; I'm sure there are HR professionals who are dedicated to their career. If you are out there... let me hear from you.
I was recently flown halfway across the country to interview with a company that was offering my husband an excellent position and was looking to make a "package" deal. I was surprised by the list of interviewers they chose for me because, while high level, they represented a division I had absolutely no interest in. Still, the whole deal was sort of last minute and the interviews "exploratory," so I opted to give it a shot and went along withn a reasonably open mind.
To make the long story short, it was a VERY unpleasant experience. I knew within 5 seconds that I definitely didn't want to work in that division, yet found myself trying to sell myself to the interviewers so as not to jeopardize my husband's negotiations. The interviewers themselves did not see the fit either so it was awful for everyone involved.
When we returned home, the recruiter told us that the "HR person" was actually a secretary that "meant well but had no idea what she was doing." (The headhunter's words, not mine). I was surprised to find that this woman was not a "real" HR person because it was never conveyed to us that way. (Or she may have been promoted to an Jr. HR position, in which case they really had no business assigning her to me, a Sr. Executive). Whatever the case, it was a disaster all around...
Having worked with a considerable number of Fortune 500 companies, my experience has been by and large that HR people tend to be management pawns, and have little to no real power. Through no fault of their own, mind you, since companies overwhelmingly see them as a necessary nuisance and override them at every possible step.
I think good HR people are a tremendous resource WHEN ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOBS, which in my experience doesn't happen very often. The lines between headhunters, HR people, legal, and hiring managers are so blurred (or overspecialized) that people tend to trample on one another, and more often than not it is the HR person who gets mauled. Companies that hire "cute little things" to play HR at least don't try to pretend they take the function seriously, so I get more ticked off at companies that hire true HR professionals and them treat them like glorified secretaries (not that there's anything wrong with being a secretary; just that the responsibilities are clear for everyone). There are plenty of other job functions that fall victim to corporate politics; HR is just one of them.
On the bright side, F500's pay HR people extremely well (healthy 6 figures) and there's often little, if any, overtime plus great benefits, so it might be worthwhile to bite the bullet!
It's sad, but trying to train the 20s giggle sisters is somewhat if a challenge. They feel as if they have "arrived" being a good-looking college graduate given a 35k recruiting job. They feel as if they are on top of the world and need no further training. They look at the "dinosaurs" in the office (the 30 and 40 year olds) as old and out of touch with life in general. The sad part is that these young girls haven't even begun their lives. They are still enjoying the partying and dating scene from college with the most devastating event being that their VCR did not record "Grey's Anatomy" while they were "out last night". What a tragedy! This is my experience with HR; I'm sure there are HR professionals who are dedicated to their career. If you are out there... let me hear from you.
I let them be cutsie, fall on their face in public and then take them aside. Were we any better? I remember sneaking in through the shop area to take a shower and try to make it through the day. Most of that day clueless. Some shake out pretty well. Others disappear.
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HR is a hard field to break into
