The HR career guide

These are people who get us our jobs, organise lucrative induction sessions, introduce us to the right mentors, address issues related to employee grievances and ensure our journey into any organisation is a smooth one. HR professionals are no longer just doing backend jobs, but are now considered active decision makers too in subjects related to business. The creativity and innovation that they bring to the table in matters concerning recruitment, the inventive approach they harbour towards people management and experiments that they conduct to ensure retention and employee motivation, are a few factors that led to the transformation of HR from being a timekeeping function to a key strategic contributor to business goals.


Several aspirants are keen on starting a career in HR as it throws many lucrative opportunities. Career analysts point out that the demand for HR jobs will increase in the future and the median annual income for careers in HR too will shoot up. However, in India, it has been observed that getting a job in the HR department is not an easy task. Also, people already in HR who are seeking out for a change find it difficult to grab a good opportunity as not many vacancies are advertised as openly as the rest.

Why is it so difficult for HR professionals to find a job for themselves? According to Sanjeev Duggal, CEO and executive director, Centum Learning Limited, “Most organisations work on an average ratio of 100:1 which means, for 100 employees, there is one HR personnel that is hired. Also, the size of the HR department depends on the culture and size of the organisation. The trend also seen these days is that of organisations resorting to technology and outsourcing HR transactions. However, in certain industry verticals like BPO, the number of HR personnel required is more because of the size of the organisation and high levels of hiring and attrition that take place.”


There are seven management functions of a human resources (HR) department: staffing, performance appraisals, compensation and benefits, training and development, employee and labour relations, safety and health and human resource research. The HRM staff in larger organisations may include human resource generalists and human resource specialists too. As the name implies, an HR generalist is routinely involved with all seven HRM functions while an HR specialist focuses his/her attention on only one of the seven responsibilities. So, has the trend changed from hiring generalist HR people to hiring specialist HR managers? “While at a middle management level, specialist skills maybe required, at top and operational levels, generalist skills are preferred. Specialist HR professionals might be in demand for a phase when that particular industry vertical is growing, but it is always the generalist professionals who are more in demand as they have the expertise of working with various industry verticals. Also, in terms of individual goals, every HR professional aspires to head the HR department of an organisation and one can only do that by being a generalist equipped with the knowledge of all HR domains,” Duggal elucidates.

According to Krishnan, these terms are used normally at the entry- and middle-levels where people do undifferentiated jobs, which are largely transactional in nature. “If you look at HR outsourcing, then certainly, it requires a certain level of specialisation. But, if you look at the bulk of jobs, about 60-70 per cent of them are in functional HR. For a person working in HR, you have to know everything. You can’t afford to be a master of just one area, as at some point, it will hamper your growth. Hence, if you are getting into an organisation, it is best to have a wide range of HR exposure,” he states.

Guruvayurappan expresses, “This goes by the maturity of the organisation. In large organisations, each sub-function of HR will have accountability for that particular vertical and it is important to have specialists in those areas, whereas in small organisations, generalists can play multiple roles within HR. For example, we created a specialist role for performance management recently in order to link the scorecard approach to Performance Management System (PMS). All that we did was move an HR generalist to own this process and groomed him/her to be a specialist in PMS,” he explains.

So, what is it that HR professionals should keep in mind in order to crack it through some good jobs? Guruvayurappan suggests, “In my opinion, before seeking an opportunity in HR, it is important for aspirants to understand the underlined purpose of this function.” Duggal advises, “HR professionals at junior levels should be open to working in various HR sub-domains and should not restrict themselves to one particular sub-domain. As they climb up the organisational ladder, they should look at some form of specialisation at the middle-level and again, generalise at a senior-level.”

So, if you were finding it difficult to crack it through that HR job, apply these tips and you are sure to land yourself a great job soon!