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I will be finishing my peace corps service soon, and want to transition into a new career as soon as possible. I have an undergraduate degree in history and a masters in teaching while my experience is two years of inner city teaching and two years of Peace Corps. There is no way I will ever teach K-12 again, but all of my education and experience is geared towards that. I know it probably sounds weird to you guys that have only known an office, but I sometimes daydream about working in a cubicle. I have a good game plan in place to find employment in another field, but I won't really know how interested employers are in me until I start firing off applications in a month or two. Human Resources seems to be one of the fields where my education and experience would carry over. From what I understand HR does recruiting, hiring, training, payroll, and general workplace environment type stuff. I would obviously be qualified for professional training type stuff, and I think I could spin my peace corps service well enough into everything else. I would love to get insight from people who work in HR in either the private and public sector. It would be nice to know what your day to day is like and what employers look for in entry level HR hires.
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Oct 26, 2014 01:59
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laxbro posted:I will be finishing my peace corps service soon, and want to transition into a new career as soon as possible. I have an undergraduate degree in history and a masters in teaching while my experience is two years of inner city teaching and two years of Peace Corps. There is no way I will ever teach K-12 again, but all of my education and experience is geared towards that. I know it probably sounds weird to you guys that have only known an office, but I sometimes daydream about working in a cubicle. I have a good game plan in place to find employment in another field, but I won't really know how interested employers are in me until I start firing off applications in a month or two. Since you haven't had any replies I'm going to take the plunge. I have a sister-in-law with a Bachelor's degree and post-graduate HR diploma, and our current office monkey also has the same professional credentials, PLUS the professional certification as a CHRP (certified human resources professional). They both work as secretaries/office assistants/office monkeys. I'm in Canada, but I believe the same conditions exist in the USA - in 2008, the economic crisis hit a bunch of finance positions,and HRs were also in that clump of occupations where suddenly there were more professionals than positions. There are a pile of out-of-work or under-employed HR peeps with appropriate education AND certification all vying for decent, full time positions. HR is a little more complex than you might think, as you need to know taxation implications and benefits, and maybe have a specialty like global mobility. As for professional training, this is often done by a Certified Training and Development Professional (CTDP) or someone with adult education experience. Since it seems like that is more of your interest, you might want to look into CTDP courses and that stream of interest in general. I have a close friend who did CTDP after teaching English abroad for 5 years, and he did it while working a full time bland office job. At the end of the course he actually had a full slate of interviews, and ended up at a large awesome employer that he loves.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:45
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Thanks for the advice. I plan to move to DC, and if I did HR it would likely be HR consulting. I don't have the resume for that yet, so I would build experience at a federal agency. Thanks for the info on CDTP. I will probably end up in some sort of federal job, but I would like to work in the private sector at some point down the line. Thanks!
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Oct 29, 2014 22:40
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I never understood why people go into HR. Why not do sales or marketing if your dream is to be hated by everyone at an office work setting. Atleast with those sales/marketing you can pretend to be Gordon Gekko or Don Drape. HR has what, loving Toby from the Office.
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Oct 29, 2014 22:59
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Snatch Duster posted:I never understood why people go into HR. Why not do sales or marketing if your dream is to be hated by everyone at an office work setting. Atleast with those sales/marketing you can pretend to be Gordon Gekko or Don Drape. HR has what, loving Toby from the Office. I too like to base my entire career on my perceptions from movies and TV shows.
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Oct 30, 2014 04:48
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Bloody Queef posted:I too like to base my entire career on my perceptions from movies and TV shows. There's a reason those perceptions are so popular: because the vast majority of people can relate to them.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:36
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I'm filled with dread every time I speak with the HR guy at work. Don't be that guy. That guy wears bowling shirts, talks too much, and has the largest soul patch it's possible to grow. Plus he is constantly waiting for you to slip up so he can save the company some money.
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Oct 31, 2014 13:44
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I work in HR in the public sector, my backgrounds in IO psychology. The level of professionalization of HR varies greatly by organisation. Some organisations consider HR an admin job and you'll do payroll and customer service type stuff. At the other end, some organisations consider HR a professional function where you'll be expected to directly support managers in delivering projects. It's a challenging job, you have to know the organisation inside out. Some project management and finance experience is a plus. If you can't talk to managers about what they do and understand what they need, you're in trouble. There's often great variety in a HR role though. I'm going to be honest though, I'm not sure your experience as it stands is really suitable for HR. That's not to discourage you but if you're interested, a formal qualification is required to get the more interesting roles. I hire trainers all the time, teaching isn't a typical background. Most are highly experienced in their specific area. It's not like teaching a room full of kids. People will have often have highly technical questions and you need tons of experience to be credible.
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Nov 1, 2014 00:42
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The actual threat an HR person poses to your daily livelihood correlates directly to how lovely your job is.
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Nov 1, 2014 01:34
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adamarama posted:I'm going to be honest though, I'm not sure your experience as it stands is really suitable for HR. That's not to discourage you but if you're interested, a formal qualification is required to get the more interesting roles. I hire trainers all the time, teaching isn't a typical background. Most are highly experienced in their specific area. It's not like teaching a room full of kids. People will have often have highly technical questions and you need tons of experience to be credible. Yea I am almost definitely going to work in the federal government when I first get back. I will build experience and then decide if I want to transition to the private sector. I can always work in international development or education policy with my background if human resources doesn't seem like a good fit. My cousin is the senior manager of human resources at a consulting firm in the city I want to move to. I sent him an email yesterday and hopefully he will point me in the right direction.
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Nov 1, 2014 02:29
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laxbro posted:Yea I am almost definitely going to work in the federal government when I first get back. I will build experience and then decide if I want to transition to the private sector. I can always work in international development or education policy with my background if human resources doesn't seem like a good fit. My cousin is the senior manager of human resources at a consulting firm in the city I want to move to. I sent him an email yesterday and hopefully he will point me in the right direction. I work in HR in Australia. A little about me: I completed a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Accounting and Human Resource Management at the end of last year. Since that time I've been working in HR for a civil earthworks and mining company. Since I am pretty much at the bottom - a "Human Resource Administrator", feel free to ask me any questions you want? I've worked in both recruitment and training, so I can speak specifically about those two areas (plus others that I have second hand experience in). Guni fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Nov 1, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 02:56
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laxbro posted:I will be finishing my peace corps service soon, and want to transition into a new career as soon as possible. I have an undergraduate degree in history and a masters in teaching while my experience is two years of inner city teaching and two years of Peace Corps. There is no way I will ever teach K-12 again, but all of my education and experience is geared towards that. I know it probably sounds weird to you guys that have only known an office, but I sometimes daydream about working in a cubicle. I have a good game plan in place to find employment in another field, but I won't really know how interested employers are in me until I start firing off applications in a month or two. I loved Office Space as much as everyone else, but office monkey style work can actually actually pretty great if your workload is manageable and your coworkers/office politics are reasonable. If they are not it is can be pure torture. People have already pointed out that (a) you are looking to go into career where it's a good possibility everyone will hate you and (b) there are very few jobs due to oversupply of labor. My contribution: you are aware that the function of HR is to protect and support the company, not the employees? Your education and Peace Corps experience seems to imply you want(ed?) to make some sort of positive difference in the world rather than just increasing corporate profits. It doesn't mean you will necessarily look to screw employees over but being able to do it for the benefit of the company is a requirement of the position. You will probably also be tasked with taking away people's livelihoods when the more spineless managers refuse to do their own dirty work in firings/layoffs.
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Nov 1, 2014 17:05
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seacat posted:My contribution: you are aware that the function of HR is to protect and support the company, not the employees? Your education and Peace Corps experience seems to imply you want(ed?) to make some sort of positive difference in the world rather than just increasing corporate profits. It doesn't mean you will necessarily look to screw employees over but being able to do it for the benefit of the company is a requirement of the position. You will probably also be tasked with taking away people's livelihoods when the more spineless managers refuse to do their own dirty work in firings/layoffs. This is a good point, and has definitely helped me refocus. HR is a backup plan. My first career choice would as a program manager with a federal agency that has an interesting mission. Department of Education or Dept of Agriculture are my number one choices right now, and the private sector opportunities associated with both are extremely interesting. Basically, I am nervous about being able to find a job (that isn't teaching) when I get back, so I am exploring any and all options.
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Nov 1, 2014 17:41
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I'm also looking into HR per my friend's recommendation; she went through UIUC's MHRIR program and can't recommend it enough, and it seems their job placement rates are pretty consistently high. Are there really so few jobs? I got a useless follow-ur-dreams liberal arts BA and I'm trying to salvage what's left of my wasted potential.
PERMACAV 50 fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 03:14
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I work in payroll, but I would have a hard time calling this HR. I'd remove that from your expectations of "HR" and instead label it as "finance". I would also include benefits in this. Working in payroll.... well I'll make an ask tell about payroll someday, but I've only been doing it for a year and I'm still not comfortable having an ask tell because I don't know enough about it. That should explain how complicated payroll is.
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Nov 19, 2014 04:34
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Veskit posted:I work in payroll, but I would have a hard time calling this HR. I'd remove that from your expectations of "HR" and instead label it as "finance". I would also include benefits in this. Working in payroll.... well I'll make an ask tell about payroll someday, but I've only been doing it for a year and I'm still not comfortable having an ask tell because I don't know enough about it. That should explain how complicated payroll is. Smaller companies have payroll as a part of HR's job description. Frequently in larger companies a payroll clerk ultimately reports to the head of HR, rather than the CFO. Maybe if you worked for more than a year at one place you'd be in more of a position to weigh in on this.
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Nov 21, 2014 20:25
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I worked at a Fortune 500 doing payroll taxes, and maybe 50% of my job was accounting, and the other 50% was call-center type "customer service" stuff for employees. Stuff like, "hey rear end in a top hat, stop garnishing my wages" or "hey rear end in a top hat, I put in the wrong routing number on my direct deposit, where the hell is my money?" Sometimes we'd get the "my boss is stealing my hours" calls, and 9 times out of 10 it was actually the employee who couldn't do math, but I gotta be honest, the 1 time out of 10 I got to nail crooked managers was pretty awesome. If you like working with women, HR is a good call. I don't know what the opposite of a sausage fest is, but that's HR.
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Nov 21, 2014 20:53
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posh spaz posted:
A taco fiesta?
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Nov 21, 2014 21:56
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Bloody Queef posted:Smaller companies have payroll as a part of HR's job description. Frequently in larger companies a payroll clerk ultimately reports to the head of HR, rather than the CFO. Maybe if you worked for more than a year at one place you'd be in more of a position to weigh in on this.  In small companies most people do their payroll through third party services because the risk is too high to run it by yourself, and eventually is just cheaper to handle it through someone else especially with how much risk is involved. Also just because you don't report to the CFO up the chain, doesn't mean it doesn't involve finance and accounting heavily. It's disingenuous to say that payroll is like HR. It functions more like finance/accounting than it does HR.
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Nov 21, 2014 22:19
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I'm a junior HR executive, and my two cents is that HR is a great place to work if you have the right corporate culture (which is the most weasel way of putting it ever, I think). HR in places with really relaxed standards and a 'let poo poo slide' culture make HR a hellhole to work in and with, because the only time people meet you is when something colossally bad has happened and you need to drop the hammer on somebody. If the only time you interact with people is when you're telling them they're going to get fired your life will be miserable. You're basically the business equivalent of the boogeyman in these types of companies. If you're in a company where managers have interests in minimizing risks and employees buy into that as well it's a lot more tolerable because your relationship with all parties is less adversarial, even friendly! I spend a lot of my time working with upper level managers working on incentive plans for employees, and it's actually quite fun to do, and even rank-and-file employees generally seem to not view me as the enemy. Admittedly, I don't do employee relations work but in my experience the company is quite tolerant/appreciative of HR across the board. Also, none of this applies if you're in payroll. Payroll is the dark heart of HR-Africa, and to venture there is to be put upon at all sides by angry natives who want you to give them more money because they can't submit their hours correctly. (Also: it is often more finance than human resources proper, but hell if we're going to let finance have the keys to the compensation castle.)
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Nov 21, 2014 22:31
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I'd also say that companies of similar size and we'll also say similar culture probably have the same type of HR, and you could interchangeably move from company to company doing HR functions with little to no problems. GOOD, THE gently caress LUCK, going from doing payroll from Apple to doing payroll for Allstate. I wouldn't even wants to imagine what doing retail for allstate is like. Or a transition from Microsoft to Blue Cross Blue Shield. Zodiac5000 posted:Also, none of this applies if you're in payroll. Payroll is the dark heart of HR-Africa, and to venture there is to be put upon at all sides by angry natives who want you to give them more money because they can't submit their hours correctly. (Also: it is often more finance than human resources proper, but hell if we're going to let finance have the keys to the compensation castle.) Is it really that bad? Maybe it's because I'm more on the IT side of things and I don't have to work directly with our employees but instead the vendors it's much easier. Call center must be brutal round these parts... Veskit fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Nov 21, 2014 |
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Nov 21, 2014 22:40
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Zodiac5000 posted:Also, none of this applies if you're in payroll. Payroll is the dark heart of HR-Africa, and to venture there is to be put upon at all sides by angry natives who want you to give them more money because they can't submit their hours correctly. (Also: it is often more finance than human resources proper, but hell if we're going to let finance have the keys to the compensation castle.) I don't think payroll was that bad. I got a lot of chances to cross-train, since I worked closely with employee relations, benefits, admin, recruiting. We were also the first prompt on the corporate phone system, so I learned a ton about the company that way, just because when people asked me things I wanted to know the answer and took the initiative to figure stuff out. My cubicle was right next to the employee relations people, and their job sounded way worse, as far as dealing with super angry people yelling at them. I got it on occasions, but they got it maybe half the day, every day. TwoSheds posted:A taco fiesta? Yeah, I know it's flippant but I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I did really enjoy most of the ladies I worked with. More just pointin out how out of the 100-ish people in the whole of HR, there were maybe 10 men.
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Nov 22, 2014 01:39
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