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• HR adviser: Jill

HR adviser: Jill

This Case Study belongs to Human resources officer.

I graduated with a degree in business and Spanish from Coventry University in 2000. I chose to pursue a career in HR as this had been the area of business that I had found most interesting during my studies.

At first I found it difficult to get a job in HR so did some general administration work for a year or so. I then managed to get a role at the local authority in HR as a clerical officer. This gave me a great insight to the world of HR. I took the opportunity to accompany more senior colleagues in meetings and took notes for them. This was invaluable in learning some of the issues that HR professionals get involved in, and was also a time when I realised there were two sides to every story.

I realised that in order to be able to progress my career I would need to gain the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) qualification so I started an MSc in HRM part-time course at Sheffield Hallam University in 2002. Studying part-time was essential for me in that it provided me with access to real life examples of HR in practice and also access to a workforce to help me with my final year dissertation on employee involvement.

In this time I also managed to get a temporary promotion as an assistant HR adviser, which allowed me to gain further experience. As this was temporary, I then applied for a permanent position within the NHS. I gained more experiences of people management issues along with specialising in recruitment. I did come to the conclusion that I was really more interested in the generalist role of HR, so after three years I returned to the public authority in a different department.

I greatly enjoy the variety of my role and the daily challenges my colleagues and I face. Good people management can be very rewarding but it does not happen overnight.

I enjoy coaching managers. It is very rewarding when they have followed your advice and it is very satisfying to see them become excellent people managers.

I find that the harder aspects of the role that I deal with are potentially contentious and often involve high levels of emotion. There is also a pressure from managers to give the most up-to-date advice and for you to get it right the first time.

The specific skills and attributes needed in this role are an ability to see both sides of a story, to be willing to change your mind and constantly question yourself and others, the ability to influence managers to take a certain course of action by backing it up with experience, law and good practice. You need to be able to analyse and interpret complex information and to communicate this to people at all levels of the organisation, be a good listener and to have a firm but fair approach, as being in HR is not a ‘soft' option.

There is an ever increasing need for HR to play a role, and prove their worth, in order to be a true business partner and to have input at a senior level in the organisation, providing innovative solutions to people management issues.

I see my career growing in HR to a more senior, operational management position after a few years. Every day I learn something new.

Case Study sourced by Simon Thompson of University of Derby, 29 August 2008.