The Career Path Of A Human Resource Manager

This is a true story as told to DiversityJobs.com where you can find helpful career interviews and job search advice in your desired industry. Visit to find a career interview in your field today. I am a human resources manager that heads up the recruitment division at a defense and aerospace company. I have worked as manager for about five years now, and worked within the recruitment division in various roles at the same company for nine years before that. In general, human resources officers strive to find and retain great employees for a company. As the manager of recruitment, I strive to find recent graduates or employees at other companies who are especially talented that would make good additions to our company. As a result, I travel to college campuses and job fairs looking for ideal candidates. When not traveling, I help oversee the interview process for prospective employees as well as training procedures. On a scale of one to ten I would rate my job satisfaction as an eight or nine. I love traveling regularly and I love meeting new people. I am always excited by the talented young people I encounter on our recruitment trips. I am also given wide reign over how I want to run this division and handle recruitment. Autonomy and freedom are incredibly important to me, so being given the responsibility of running my own department is incredibly important to me. Whenever I encounter some particularly inspiring students or potential employees it is especially rewarding. A lot of people are fulfilling their dreams by getting a job with our company and it is simply amazing to be a part of that. Needless to say, there is very little I would change about my job.

The Career Path Of A Human Resource Manager

I originally got into this line of work out of college. I started off as a human resources analyst: I essentially tracked data like turnover rate, starting salaries, and other statistics that are important for maintaining top talent when competing against other companies. After working in that role for many years, my name came up for promotion when our company needed a new manager. I was fortunate enough to land the job! Everyday is fairly satisfying for me. I am either meeting, interviewing, or assessing new candidates for the company. As previously mentioned, this is an inspiring process. I get to meet people at the peak of potential about to embark on exciting careers. It is great to work with them on a daily basis. I am also immensely proud of all the hard work my team does in setting up job fairs or researching colleges to visit. They do a lot of the legwork involved in setting these events up and I appreciate this immensely. My job is rarely stressful these days, thankfully. Human resources is a good field for low-stress work, I have noticed. Many of my colleagues in other departments fight against deadlines and other short-term issues; meanwhile, human resources officers tend to focus primarily on longer term goals, like finding new talent that will eventually be needed. This allows us to carefully plan out new strategies without being rushed. In fact, this is one of my favorite parts of the job. The only time there is remotely any stress is when a department suddenly needs critical people and we are tasked with filling these spots as quickly as possible. This is rare, however, as either people can temporarily fill jobs or can take on new responsibilities for the time being. Even with the stressful patches, I am very happy with the balance I have achieved with my personal life and my work. I have plenty of time for my family and myself. Someone with my experience in my position could make between $90,000 and $100,000 depending on company size and other factors. I am very pleased with my salary and the lifestyle I live from it. I enjoy the work and make good money doing it, so I cannot complain. In addition, I travel frequently for work and am also entitled to five weeks of paid vacation along with other benefits. Needless to say, I am very pleased with this; it makes any temporary stress well worth it. To get hired in this field you should focus on a major in business, human resources, or communications. I majored in business and then earned my MBA after a few years of working. This combination set me up for the management position I currently am in. In addition to college, you need strong written and verbal communication skills . You also need to enjoy and understand people. Being social and being able to read people is invaluable in a position that requires you to make value judgments on people you have just met. In five years I hope to be either in the same position or promoted up to chief human resources officer, which is the next level. Either way, I plan on staying in human resources for the entirety of my career . Photo Credit: Shutterstock