Human Resources is the area of an organization that deals with hiring, firing, administrative work, and training of a company team. It’s a career that you must love in order to deal with all of the crazy that happens on a daily basis. HR is rewarding in many ways; it has more career paths to try than the directors of Game of Thrones have actors to kill off, seriously. But as an HR newbie, I found that starting out was be one of my most challenging battles in my life.
There are some HR pros that had the pleasure of “falling into the HR World,” but this isn’t the case for everyone. It’s a hard field to enter if you don’t have the proper tools to succeed and one of the biggest resources available is the people that truly love this field.0
You have your college degree and your knowledge to show you worked hard for at least 4 years, if not more, to understand what HR is all about. Now it’s time to put that brain to work land your first official HR job, here is how you can do it:
Resume
Hopefully you’ve been able to have some on the job training through internships or actually HR work in the past. Listing this information in the right way is crucial to making sure the company pays attention to your resume. If you’re able to, spend the money to use great resume businesses like The Resume Crusade run by Chris Fields. Check out his website for pricing and information. You can get in contact with Chris through his email chris@resumecrusade.net or Twitter account @ResumeCrusade. If you don’t have the money to get a resume made, contact your local SHRM Chapter or the National SHRM, they are full of HR pros who can help you or get you in contact with the right HR pros who can.
Interviewing 101
Interviews are the second hurdle to landing the job. You’ve submitted your resume and they liked it enough to call you in for a face to face conversation. Interviews are just a conversation that helps the company understand how you will fit into their current culture with the team. Research the company as much as possible, not to make your responses sound practiced, but if you’re able to understand what they do and like the position available, they will see your excitement for the role. Make your interview memorable for the right reasons, not because you were late or wore pajamas to the interview -yes it has been done.
There are many great resources to use to get your foot in the door. Join all areas of social media and get your name out, let people know what you’re looking for and where. Networking will always be around so you might as well learn at the start of your career.
As an HR Newbie, as I like to call us, you’re about to embark on a ride that has many twists and turns, create your HR Tribe early and you’ll always have great people to fall back on when you need a push in the right direction.
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