Four Ways to Start the Year Right as an HR Professional

Human resources professionals are tasked with jobs ranging from talent acquisition to compliance with employment laws and even sorting out healthcare and similar company benefits. Savvy HR professionals should start the year right by ensuring that they have the skills and competencies needed for success in the coming year. By planning for the future and making some small changes or refocusing efforts, it is easier for HR professionals to tackle the many challenges that the future may present.

As an HR professional, you may find talent acquisition easier if you choose to think about the situation as an economist would instead of through the lens of your human resource training. When looking at the market as a situation of supply and demand, an HR professional can enter the mindset needed to find exactly the right talent for the job. Supply and demand are tricky aspects of many major markets, and human resources is little different. Changing your mindset in this manner may allow you to more easily look to the future of your career and your company when it comes time to hire new people.

Taking a different look at your hiring processes can also pay off in the future. There are two ways you can do this. The first is to stop seeing the number of credentials and past jobs an applicant has had in the field. Minimum requirements are only the beginning when it comes time for you, as an HR professional, to screen candidates. You must look beyond the resume in many cases. The second part of this aspect is to start seeing applicants as human beings. Humans are capable of many things beyond what their initial education and experience may present. Determining early on whether or not a person seems likely to rise to the challenge and excel in the role you have available to them is as important, if not more so, than whether or not they meet a specific rubric.

The fourth and final way to start the year right for an HR professional is by building a personal brand. Just as thinking like an economist can help you make sense of the personnel market at large, thinking like a marketer can help your career advancement. Detailing your own accomplishments and creating a short list of anecdotes that explain the challenges you have overcome as an HR professional can give you the tools you need to seek promotion or more easily justify a raise during your own annual evaluation. This is also a great time to suggest further human resource training for the rollout of different company benefits or programs to ensure that everyone in your department is on the same page, and making such suggestions can further enhance your personal brand.

These four steps can help ensure you have a good year as an HR professional. Seeing the personnel market in the same fashion as an economist views business, looking past credentials and experience, viewing people as constantly changing individuals, and building your personal brand can help give you the tools you need for success in the industry.

(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)