Is a question which should certainly be posed by anyone looking to embark on a career in HR.  And perhaps just as importantly by those already in HR and considering the strategic direction in which to plot their career path. You are much more likely to reach a realistic goal, if firstly you know what that goal is, why you wish to attain it and what some of the obstacles you may face along the way are.

To consider the career options for the HR professional we must first understand what is HR? This is not as simple a question as one would first imagine. Over the last 40 years, the administrative and industrial relations brief of the "old school" Personnel Manager, has been broadened to a "new school" of HR professional (the Institute of Personnel and Development gained Chartered status on 1st July 2000). This "new school" is a very broad school indeed with a much wider range of skills, influence and presence across all organisations of any size.

Overall Human Resources Management can be defined as a "strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organisations most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of its goals" (from A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice - Michael Armstrong - 2000 revised edition).

The first key distinction is between that of the Generalist and the Specialist:-

The HR Generalist (e.g. HR Officer/Adviser, HR Manager/Director) supply a broad range of HR support and services to a set population of employees within an organisation. These services might include the development, communication of and advice upon the application of HR policies on issues such as maternity, performance management and equal opportunities etc; employee relations such as disciplinary proceedings; along with potential support in areas such as recruitment, change management and organisational development, training and development and compensation and benefits. Their key role is to develop strong working relationships with the key stakeholders within the business and understand the people issues with which they need assistance to make the business perform most effectively.

Senior HR Generalists such as HR Directors and Heads of HR will have, if the size and complexity of the organisation merits, specialist HR functions reporting into them and may have spent time in these functions themselves in the past as they developed their career. In general the higher up the career ladder the HR professional goes, the greater the emphasis there will be upon strategic input to, as opposed to direct delivery of, the HR interventions designed to impact upon the people issues the business may face now and in the future

The HR Specialists operate in specific areas of the HR profession that require a specific skill and knowledge set and will generally concentrate on these areas full time, the key examples of which are:

Training & Development Compensation & Benefits Recruitment

The development of the talents and skills base within an organisation is essential in generating competitive advantage through the performance and ability of its people.

Increasingly, this function is becoming known as Learning and Development. This recognises the more modern approach that learning doesn't have to be achieved through traditional classroom delivery, with the increasing utilisation of e-learning and coaching as learning techniques.

Roles within this field include:-

Training Co-ordinator - A primarily administrative role at entry level to arrange training events such as delegate booking and handling venue and facilities arrangements.

Perfect for the naturally outgoing individual with an ability to gather, understand and communicate knowledge effectively. Training deliverer's come in many shapes and sizes and level of seniority, starting from your in-house basic skills training officer probably earning £18-30,000, through to your management training consultants, who have a seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of management theory, will design and deliver bespoke management courses for corporate organisation and earn anything up to and including six figure salaries.

At the pinnacle, are the management theorists, such as Stephen Covey. These people invent and update modern best practice, which all trainers follow. They will often lecture or facilitate themselves, but don't expect them to get out of bed, unless considerable sums of money are involved.

In-house roles which lead the way in which training and development is organised within a business. The role tends to be commercial in nature, as they are usually budget holding roles where strategic procurement decisions have to be made with regard to external training suppliers and the very nature of the mix between internal infrastructure and external supply. They will look to meet the training and development needs of the organisation with consideration to optimising the highest quality/best value equation.

These roles also have an ambassadorial and account management aspect, as the Training & Development Manager/Director will need to get close to the key stakeholders in the business to understand what issues the business may need resolving and then sell how Training & Development can add value to the business in solving these issues. The more strategic and central Training and Development is to an organisation, the more a Training and Development Director will be looking to create competitive advantage for the business by instilling leading edge practices and benchmarking themselves against their competitors. It is not unusual to find Training and Development Directors in knowledge sector businesses to be on basic salaries of around £100,000 p.a.

The compensation and benefits of a businesses employees and directors represents a significant proportion of any businesses cost structure. This is therefore a particularly emotive area, not only for the business, but also for the businesses most valuable assets, their employees.

Compensation and Benefits specialists play a fundamental role in the medium/large organisation. They are there to source well structured and reasonable Compensation and Benefits schemes that operate effectively and provide best value to the organisation, whilst structuring remuneration schemes that will attract and retain the best talent available. This work is often carried out within a multi-country geographical framework.

Compensation and Benefits roles tend to be more technical and analytical than other HR roles, the incumbent needing to be able to grasp the detail of complex renumeration and benefits structures and able to analyse industry trends. Compensation and Benefits roles can be found both in-house within medium/large organisations and within consultancy environments, such as Watson Wyatt, where C & B specialists will provide specialist services targeted at the development, analysis and benchmarking of benefits and compensation schemes for organisations who lack the resource, skills, market knowledge or time to handle the projects internally.

The typical entry-level position tends to be that of C & B Analyst, a role that has a hefty statistical bias. As a C & B specialist develops up the career ladder, they will become involved in areas such as the establishments of share option schemes, the selection and procurement of benefits providers, the development of bonus and performance management reward structures, international assignments reward and assistance structure and in times of Merger and Acquisition, due diligence on the content of reward structures within the acquired business to investigate compatibility, risk and integration of the organisations schemes once the deal has been completed.

C & B specialists tend to receive a premium of reward on top of their generalist colleagues. However, there can be a ceiling on their reward as it is unlikely a C & B specialist role will take an individual to board level within an organisation, generally they will still report to an HR Director and may need to make the step into a generalist role to climb still further. An alternative to this is to continue joining ever larger and more complex international organisations, where employee reward is of critical strategic importance, hence increasing the value and seniority of the Head C&B role.

Only a decade ago, this was primarily an administrative function as line managers held ownership of the key decisions in this area. However, as talent has become scarcer, and competition for it fiercer, especially within new economy organisations, recruitment has become of increasing strategic importance to businesses.

Recruitment can be a sizeable cost to many organisations, hence Recruiting Managers/Directors briefs can often be dominated by strategically structuring their function and supply lines of candidate and recruitment service into the most efficient manner, often working with the procurement function to negotiate group-wide and international deals with preferred search and selection outfits.

They will also have the role of promoting the business to potential employees, improving communication with universities; working with advertising agencies and the marketing function to develop innovative and eye-catching recruitment campaigns to attract applications and working to ensure that the interviewee experience is of quality to maximize acceptance levels from offered candidates. A good recruiter will have advanced interview skills, an excellent understanding of what makes their business tick and why individuals should join it.

This needs to be coupled with a thorough understanding of what the business seeks in terms of values and skills held by the people they desire to recruit. Additionally a high degree of commercial acumen and organisational ability are warranted here, as these roles can be frenetic. Recruitment is often a way into the HR function, with the desire to spread ones wings at a later date, but it can and does provide a long term career for the recruitment professional with the rewards to match.

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