5 Tips For Developing A Career In HR
5 Tips for Developing a Career in HR
The HR industry is constantly evolving. As an HR professional, the best way to keep up is to develop. It is not enough that you have the soft skills required to accomplish your tasks. You need to enhance your HR expertise if you want a promotion or acquire a leadership position.
While having the right HR skills and experience can help you stay competitive, there are many other ways to expand your abilities and skills and advance your profession.
In this article, let's talk about some tips for developing a career in HR.
1. Get Support from Your Leader
As you enter uncharted territory in your HR career, you need to get support from your leader. Mentoring is crucial to advancing your career, where you receive guidance, feedback, and support about your performance. Getting support from someone more experienced can significantly help in your professional development.
Your leader can help you identify your weaknesses, strengths, and areas of improvement. In addition, your leader can offer advice on HR projects, tasks, and your overall performance. Another way your manager can support your career progression is by helping expand your network, which could open you up to new opportunities. More importantly, HR leaders can help motivate you to challenge yourself and improve as an HR professional.
Make the most of your mentoring relationship with your leader by setting clear goals, expectations, and boundaries. Maintain regular and open communication and respect each other's time and availability. Before your mentoring session, prepare an agenda and a list of questions. Listen attentively to your mentor and express your appreciation and gratitude for the guidance. Be open to implementing their feedback and suggestions and keep them updated on your progress and results.
2. Be Proactive with Feedback
Being proactive with getting feedback can help progress your HR career. As an HR professional, you will face various situations in your profession that require creative solutions. By being more innovative and enthusiastic, it will be easier for your leaders to trust you in taking up more advanced roles.
In many companies, HR teams must start from scratch to establish and implement processes to help the team scale effectively. In most cases, HR will take the lead on initiatives to build a set of cultural values to support the company long term.
A proactive attitude can go a long way in developing a career in HR. Do not wait for someone to assign responsibilities to you. Instead, determine what your company needs and act on it.
Do not be afraid to experiment, but be open to feedback, which helps to gauge your effectiveness. If your ultimate goal is to improve retention and employee engagement, you must gather direct feedback about your new initiatives. Conduct as many in-person conversations as possible. As your organisation scales, always check with employees through surveys and other means.
3. Work on your HR Skills
Whether you're new or an experienced HR professional wanting to sharpen your skills, you can rely on training and development courses to provide additional insights and resources to progress your career. Human Resources is an ever-changing field, which makes it necessary to stay up to date with the best practices, workplace policies, and recent changes. Taking HR training is the best way to boost your knowledge in the field, which is crucial for developing your HR career.
HR professionals can also benefit from various other training and course materials, including topics about health and safety. Those working in HR can benefit from health and safety training courses online, gaining valuable insights and certifications to ensure a safe and compliant work environment.
Training can also help HR professionals develop the skills essential in their careers, including organisational, communication, and adaptability skills. These skills allow them to manage their daily tasks and improve productivity. They can also make use of HR Software to improve efficiency in their work.
Undergoing an HR training course can help boost your knowledge in the field, which improves your organisation's HR processes. Regardless of how long you have been in the field, it's never too late to hone your expertise in HR through training.
4. Look for Long Term Opportunities
If you see yourself working as an HR professional for the long term, you should look for long-term opportunities in your HR career. Is it your goal to manage others? Do you see yourself filling leadership roles? If so, you need to think long-term.
Each of the HR roles has distinct responsibilities requiring diverse skill sets. As you explore various opportunities at the lower level, keep your long-term goals in mind and consider which skills and experiences will be most valuable to you in the future.
Experts predict HR jobs will grow significantly in the coming years. When considering long-term opportunities, you should be open to new roles and responsibilities, including non-traditional HR career paths related to digital transformation, sustainability, and well-being.
HR careers are no longer linear. You can expect to have more diversity as you progress in your career. Nowadays, HR professionals can easily switch between roles and companies. It's also normal for HR professionals to take up different roles while staying focused on the same goal.
5. Build Your Network
Having a broad professional network is crucial for developing your HR career. The people within your network may be the key to accessing new job opportunities and will keep you informed on the latest industry trends. They can also lead you to professional development opportunities.
HR professionals can build your professional network in many ways. One is to attend HR conferences. Attending conferences gives you access to various professionals under one roof who will be happy to chat and network with people like you. If you are confident, networking at conferences should be easy for you.
If attending conferences is not for you, take advantage of professional networking sites online, such as LinkedIn. Join a group of like-minded HR professionals to learn from them. Send direct messages to other group members and see if you can connect and network with them.
