The life of an HR professional can vary from day to day depending on company size, department structure, and employee strength. There is no right or wrong answer to this question and if you’re an HR professional reading this, you might have a completely different day filled with most, a few, or none of these activities. There are activities that happen more frequently inside a larger organization and in a smaller organization they might not happen at all.

A Day in the Life of an HR Professional

Here is just a short list of what a day in the life of an HR professional looks like:

• Check email
• Check new candidate profiles
• Call potential candidates for interviews
• Conduct interviews
• Handle employee complaints and related issues
• Create material for employees that relate to any HR related activity (which could vary depending on the size of your organization)
• Attend meetings
• Providing training information to new employees
• Stay up to date on training and certification within the HR industry
• Personnel Management

This list is a very short list and is usually handled by someone in an HR role. In larger organizations some of this can be broken up into different departments such as sourcing, benefits, and payroll.

If you’re an HR professional and you’re trying to stay on top of news related to your industry there are several sites out there that aggregate information together for one easy to read RSS field. One of the biggest on the Internet is HR Blogger. It compiles blogs from all over the HR spectrum in one easy to locate place that’ll help professionals stay up to date. Every HR professional should spend time sharpening their skills as HR technology and skills are constantly shifting in the industry. If they get in a rut it’ll hurt them down the road when a promotion opportunity arises.

For HR professionals the constant battle between ROI can be daunting. Sometimes you can’t prove the value of going the extra mile for the employees at your company. So that’s a hard conundrum that HR professionals face on a daily basis. From the CEO’s viewpoint it’s always going to be about the numbers. Whether or not you’re able to take care of your employees in a proper way and still worry about different ROI metrics in your department will be a battle that’s fought for years, especially if you’re a smaller company.

The day in the life of an HR professional is never the same. Each day presents new challenges and will continue because there is a great dynamic within the department depending on the size of the company. This has been a brief snapshot of the day in the life of an HR professional.

What do you do day in and day out?