Here's why.
HR people aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. We'll be blunt: If you are an ambitious young thing newly graduated from a top college or B-school with your eye on a rewarding career in business, your first instinct is not to join the human-resources dance. (At the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, which arguably boasts the nation's top faculty for organizational issues, just 1.2% of 2004 grads did so.) Says a management professor at one leading school: "The best and the brightest don't go into HR."
Who does? Intelligent people, sometimes -- but not businesspeople. "HR doesn't tend to hire a lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses," says Garold L. Markle, a longtime human-resources executive at Exxon and Shell Offshore who now runs his own consultancy. Some are exiles from the corporate mainstream: They've fared poorly in meatier roles -- but not poorly enough to be fired. For them, and for their employers, HR represents a relatively low-risk parking spot.
Others enter the field by choice and with the best of intentions, but for the wrong reasons. They like working with people, and they want to be helpful -- noble motives that thoroughly tick off some HR thinkers. "When people have come to me and said, 'I want to work with people,' I say, 'Good, go be a social worker,' " says Arnold Kanarick, who has headed human resources at the Limited and, until recently, at Bear Stearns. "HR isn't about being a do-gooder. It's about how do you get the best and brightest people and raise the value of the firm."
The really scary news is that the gulf between capabilities and job requirements appears to be widening. As business and legal demands on the function intensify, staffers' educational qualifications haven't kept pace. In fact, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a considerably smaller proportion of HR professionals today have some education beyond a bachelor's degree than in 1990.
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5 comments:
hey.. a very bleak picture... but kinda true in the Indian context. though i belive that anybody who thinks that HR is easy work.. is a fool.
that's true...... HR is the back-bone of any organization in its structure and culture........ the bone which has strength to bear the pain and still be productive enough for the organizational growth.
Cheers to the HR fraternity
Very true. The Human resources function is the core of the organization. If you think hard enough, you will realize that they are the ones who shape the character of the organization. In many ways they are also help the organization to create a brand for itself. It is funny how people undervalue a function as important as this.
Very true. The Human resources function is the core of the organization. If you think hard enough, you will realize that they are the ones who shape the character of the organization. In many ways they are also help the organization to create a brand for itself. It is funny how people undervalue a function as important as this.
Interesting perspective and very tru in terms of indian market. Although the trend is slowly changing especially in big markets like Mumbai & Delhi.
In some org HR professionals are as highly paid as sales!!
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