What do College Students Think About a Career in HR?

Published by John Dalmata on October 2, 2015

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HR Perception Had a recent opportunity to share in a presentation by the Young Professionals Network of the Capital Region Chamber of Commerce for the University of Albany business group, Albany Business Leaders Emerging (ABLE). In a short breakout session for students considering a career path in Human Resources, there emerged a predominant reason for their collective pursuit of an HR career:

“I’m interested in working in HR because I like working with people.”

Without a doubt, a necessary qualification for any HR professional is to like working with people. I understand a comment like this, and what these students meant when they said it.

That being said, my concern is that the industry perception of Human Resources is that liking to work with people is enough to see yourself as a fit for HR. Often times, liking to work with people, or even help people for that matter, can get confused with liking to please people. It’s moments when HR professionals find themselves playing the middleman between the employee and the company when they realize it’s impossible to please everyone in the organization–not a popular position, and one that demands a spine.

For the undergrad that is considering a career in Human Resources, I hope you like working with people. But there is more to it than that. Do you like working with people to the point of sacrificing your ego and desire to be liked?

Do you like people enough to develop them into the contributors that the company needs them to be?
Do you like people enough to create career paths and worthwhile performance metrics for them?
Do you like people enough to have frank conversations when their behavior is missing the mark?

Human Resource Management can be dirty work. Susan Meisinger, in her blog HR Perception Problem writes:

“I think we need to accept the reality that no matter what HR professionals do, we will always be subject to some level of criticism or complaint. It comes with the job. If you, or members of your HR team, expect to be loved by all of the employees in your organization, you need to pick another profession.”

Human Capital Management, or the management of the knowledge, skills, and abilities in an organization, is HR’s strategic future in the workforce. It’s grunt work, and it demands charismatic leadership as well as administrative skills.

I asked students if they had ever heard of Human Capital Management. I got blank stares in return. Not to their own fault. There are still plenty of professionals in HR that couldn’t tell you the difference between HR and HCM. But their eyes lit up at the prospect of serving in a key alignment role in their future organizations.

So, for those considering a career in Human Resources, I hope that you like working with people. More importantly, I hope you like to lead and develop people, and are happy to do it with little recognition. It’s truly a profession of self-sacrifice.