An organization’s human resources department handles hiring, firing, administrative tasks, and team training. You need to be passionate about your work if you want to handle the everyday craziness. Having more job options to explore than Game of Thrones’ directors have characters to kill off, HR is gratifying in many ways. But as a rookie in HR, I discovered that getting started was one of my life’s toughest challenges.

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

New to HR: The Tools for Success

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

The second barrier to getting hired is the interview. They liked your CV enough to call you in for a face-to-face interview after you submitted it. Interviews are merely conversations that help the business determine how well you will fit into the team’s existing culture. Do as much research about the organization as you can without making your answers sound scripted; if you can show that you are interested in the position and have a good understanding of what they do, they will be able to tell. Make sure your interview is remembered for the right reasons, not because you showed up late or in your pajamas (yes, this has happened).

You can use a variety of excellent sites to get a foot in the door. Join all social media platforms, spread the word about you, and let people know what and where you’re looking for. Since networking is a constant in business, you might as well start learning now.

Create your HR Tribe early so that you always have great people to fall back on when you need a push in the right direction. As an HR Newbie, as I like to call us, you’re about to embark on a ride with many twists and turns.