Now that the interview season is around the corner, it is very important that the aspirants be well aware of the various management domains and make an informed decision about the domain which they would want to pursue. The major disciplines offered by most b-schools in India are: Sales and Marketing, Finance, Operations, and Human Resources. As part of my endeavor to help students with career choices, I realized that while a lot of literature exists around the domains such as Sales and Marketing, Finance, and Operations, there wasn’t enough content to guide aspirants about Human Resource Management as a discipline in management which has happened because human resource management is the latest discipline in management and it is still evolving. Given below are the five big reasons which you should consider while deciding whether or not you want to pursue management in HR:
1.
Changing nature of employer-employee relationship: The workforce is changing rapidly in a number of ways. While some of the reasons Long gone are the days when employees spent an entire lifetime working in the same organization and doing the same kind of job. The average span of employment with an organization has reduced drastically over the years. People are more connected than ever and they have access to greater pool of opportunities. There has been a paradigm shift in the way employment has been traditionally perceived. Earlier it was mostly the aspirants who were pursuing the companies but that is not the case any longer. If the employer has a large number of eligible aspirants to choose from so does the aspirant have offers from various employers to consider. Thus, by and large the bargaining power of the aspirants has increased tremendously. In this war for talent, HR plays a very important in attracting and retaining the bright talent in the organization to outperform the competitors. The opportunity in this space is so huge that there are numerous people who left their high paying corporate jobs to become freelancer head hunters and even so they are paid handsomely for bringing in the right talent in the organization. Recruitment and selection is no longer a transactional role, it has become more of a strategic role now because across industry people have started to realize that a team is only as good as their members so they do not shy away from going the extra mile for getting the right talent onboard
2.
Changing dynamics of human workforce: Once you get the right talent onboard, the battle is only half won but if the talent management is not a robust one, your key talent may soon become stale talent. Learning and development department of the Human Resource Management department plays a very important role in maintaining sustainable competitive advantage by continuously monitoring the changing nature of jobs in the industry and appropriately reskilling and upskilling the workforce so that their skills remain relevant for their jobs. Having an inefficient learning and development department in an organization is like a frog in boiling water, the organization may not realize its impact in the short run but in the long run it can cause major damage. The good fact is that, across industries, the spending in learning and development has increased and companies are now paying more importance to it than ever before, with a more connected world, HR is now able to bring the best trainers from all over the world for their employees. Being a trainer is also another lucrative career option with rapid pace of changing skill sets, the demand for trainers will inevitably increase in future.
3.
Flexibility in industry: As we already spoke about shortening of career spans across industries, the employees working in the HRM function have an upper hand in this aspect over the other management domains as well. My research of over 500 HR leaders has led to the conclusion that, HR leaders have a lot more flexibility while changing jobs as compared to their counter parts from other functions. Just to quote an example, if we were to compare sales and marketing function with the human resource management function, the sales of automobiles is totally different from sales in banking sector so it is next to impossible for a person working in automobile sector to switch to any other sector as his skills and competencies are not perceived as relevant by employers in other sectors however, if we talk about the HR function, the work is by and large the same in all sectors and hence the skills that you would acquire being an HR leader in one company would be absolutely relevant in some other company as well. Therefore, in general, HR employees have access to much more diverse opportunities and challenging assignments than their counterparts from other management functions. As a result of which, it has been seen that management trainees joining in the HR function grow faster in their jobs than those in other functions.
4.
Burgeoning HR consulting industry: Consulting market is experiencing an unprecedented growth and HR consulting is leading the pack in terms of growth. Today nearly all of the biggest HR consulting firms are operating out of India. The roles that they are offering to the management graduates is also very lucrative one. B-schools like XLRI Jamshedpur, MDI Gurgaon and TISS Mumbai attract offers from the biggest names in HR consulting industry. Organizational design, compensation and performance management are some of the biggest areas of HR consulting. They offer a steep learning curve just like and at times more rigorous than consulting in other functions.
5.
Create an impact in people’s lives: While there may be numerous reasons which make people satisfied about their jobs, one of the biggest reasons cited had been the kind of impact they have been able to create in their jobs. HR leaders take care of the internal stakeholders in an organization and over the course of their career, each and every decision that they make has a direct impact on the lives of the employees. In many organizations such as Tata Steel, the HR leaders with their iconic HR policies paved the way for the future legislation for regulating working conditions of all industrial workers in India. A career in HR function will provide ample opportunity to you to rethink the entire concept of workspace and redefine the rules of work and bring about a positive impact in people’s lives on a massive scale and thereby create history that will live long after you’re gone.