The blood and bone of any organization is the human resources department which is required to manage functions of all the other departments. As more and more organizations are coming up, there is increasing need for good professionals to run the department. To start a career in human resources, you can begin with a number of roles. These will depend upon your training and education and also quiet much upon where your interest lies. There are roles like, employee relations, recruitment handling, training and development, employment law management work, health and safety of employees, pay and benefits management etc…
Seeing these roles, it is quite clear that a good understanding of the legal side of work comes very handy if you want to make a career in this field. Many students go through this way. You can take up a job in a legal setting and then go ahead to do some certificate course that will further strengthen your resume and then go for a human resources role. To ensure a good career in human resources, the responsibility lies very much on you in terms of learning new things and dealing with daily job challenges.
A typical day in the life of a person involved with human resources includes a lot of human interaction and thus a pre-requisite for this work is to have a good personality and good communication skills. You should also be a good listener to understand people’s problem and find a solution. As a HR professional it is also highly advised that you do not limit yourself to your job but to look for experience outside the field as well.
Here are some skill sets that you must work on to make a good name in this sector:
- Good communication skills and excellent personality. Have qualities like empathy, sensitivity, understanding and discretion.
- Be a good team player and take everyone along with you. Try to understand people from their perspective and not be judgemental
- You need to be very good at management and must respect deadlines
- Great time management skills and organisational skills
- You may be required to work on some software and the training is generally on the job. Thus it will be better to equip yourself with strong IT skills beforehand.
Apart from this the requirements will defer from role to role. Those involved in pay department are required to be good with budgetary skills and so on.
