Your HR Career Path

Discover the many career options in human resources management

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The Role of an HR Manager

Are you good with people? Do you like making others happy? Do you have an eye for details but also a keen understanding of the bigger picture? Then perhaps a career in human resources is for you.

Fundamentally, a human resource manager develops a company’s culture, maintains benefits and payroll, and recruits new hires. The HR manager is a pivotal position for any corporation, in every industry.

For those with enthusiasm and an aptitude for working well with people, HR can offer many exciting choices. HR professionals enjoy a range of career options from recruiting, to training and development, to labor relations and benefits administration.

Understanding the Options

It is important to understand what your various HR career options are and how they work. Two key terms in the human resource management sector are “generalist” and “specialist.” HR specialists focus their efforts in a single area, such as recruiting or training. Generalists are less focused and handle a number of areas and tasks simultaneously.

As a rule of thumb, small organizations and companies have one or more HR generalists who handle all HR issues. Larger organizations, on the other hand, have many specialists devoted to particular areas and services. A larger organization may also have select HR generalists devoted to managing employee relations.

Defining the Terms

The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines specialist roles to be in one of the five following areas:

• Employment and Recruiting - Involves recruiting and managing the hiring of new employees.
• Training and Development – May involve planning and conducting new employee orientation sessions and implementing training programs.
• Compensation and Benefits – Includes writing job descriptions, conducting performance evaluations, and monitoring and administering benefits packages.
• Employee and Labor Relations –This may involve handling and managing employee grievances or dealings between the organization and unions. In certain organizations, HR professionals in this specialty are also called generalists.
• Health, Safety and Security – Responsibilities include insuring that the workplace is a safe and secure environment. This may involve conducting safety inspections and maintaining safety records as well as organizing and conducting employee health and safety programs.

SHRM defines a generalist’s position to include everything from “staffing the organization, training and developing employees at all levels, managing a diverse work force, maintaining a fair and equitable compensation program, developing personnel policies and procedures, planning ways to meet the human resource needs of the future, and ensuring that internal policies and programs conform to all laws that affect the workplace.”

Charting Your HR Career Path

You can always switch between a generalist position and specialist position. Kathy DeCaprio, a Senior HR Manager, emphasizes that it is always easier to make such moves early in your career. As you spend more time in the industry, your skills and interests will become more fine-tuned and your expertise in certain areas will be valued, so career changes may become more challenging. It is a good idea to explore all possibilities early in your HR career.

Matt Aspin, a board member of the Seattle chapter of the Society of Human Resource Management says that many entry-level positions are in recruiting and administrative roles. “As recruiters,” Aspin says, “young HR professionals will most likely be able to interact with HR generalists and decide whether it is something they are interested in.” But there is no set path to follow; it is all about what you want to do.

HR Specialties

Aspin adds that some HR professionals start and end their careers in highly specialized roles. An entry level recruiter, for example, can work his or her way up to a senior position, such as Director of Recruiting or Vice President of Talent Acquisition.

The opportunities in HR management are truly varied and plentiful. Benefits and compensation, another focused area of HR management, is a specialty with a great deal of opportunity and demand. It is an area that requires analysis and research. Often, HR professionals with a knack for numbers and details can climb into lucrative and successful positions in benefits and compensation.

Training and development can also be a rewarding area of specialty, full of the excitement of ensuring that employees stay updated with the latest developments in technology and workplace practices. For those who enjoy being a “jack-of-all-trades,” becoming a generalist is the way to go. DeCaprio believes that “those HR managers that stay the sharpest are often generalists who have their hands in multiple areas.”

But ultimately, Aspin concludes, your area of concentration will “depend on your interests and make-up” and “you will naturally gravitate towards it.”