HR Can Be Your Greatest Career Asset

Posted by Sarah Hobbs

I’m sure you’ve come across managers who dismiss “Personnel” as a fluffy irrelevance. But from a career perspective, they are missing a trick.

Why should you build a great relationship with HR?

1. Their reach in the organisation is usually extensive. HR is involved with every decision regarding recruitment, selection, performance management, talent management, succession planning and restructuring. It’s not helpful for your career to be an unknown quantity!


2. People who are dismissive of HR get the reputation of someone who is critical of others, and who doesn’t seek to build a wide network of positive relationships. This will raise doubts about your political awareness and ability to work in broad-based teams and across boundaries. Instead stand out as someone who helps to make cross-functional initiatives successful.


3. By supporting HR you are viewed very positively at the top. Many people who develop a good, respectful and supportive HR relationship are seen as ‘people champions’. This is a great moniker to have when you want to be promoted or are looking for new opportunities.


4. HR people are often very knowledgeable about learning and development, and can often suggest or set up opportunities that can help you improve your skills. If you go out of your way to help them, they will go out of their way to help you – by providing introductions to people known to have great skills in the area you want to develop. They may even provide some personal coaching – for example to help you improve your CV for the position you want, or to help you do better at interview.


5. HR often know about job opportunities that may be coming up, but have not yet been advertised. They can help you get the inside track – not in any competitive way, but in terms of the chance to talk to managers about opportunities before they are fixed into a job specification. Also, if there is an opportunity to work with top managers on an initiative, or to take on a name-making project, the Talent and HR team are often approached to see if they know of a high flier who needs a stretching opportunity and would do a good job. You want them to think of you!

And the great news is, it just takes some relationship building to get access to these benefits.

1. Think about who your local HR person is – do you know them? If not, that probably says something about your current relationship with them.


2. Think corporately. When there are opportunities to help central HR, do it – the best way of getting to know them is to volunteer. There are always opportunities to help pilot things, work on new initiatives, mentor graduates, help with assessments or give feedback on new projects. Let a number of people in HR know you are interested in people initiatives and would like to get involved.


3. Think about things from HR’s perspective. Most HR action is driven by Board priorities. Rather than critiquing and resisting HR requests, think about the constraints HR are dealing with and why they have to do what they do. Beyond that, help them to communicate the things they are trying to sell into the organisation. Time given to helping support the people agenda is time well spent.


4. Make sure your aspirations are visible to them. How confident are you that people in HR know of your achievements and ambitions, and have a great relationship with you? Ask for help – say that you are looking to develop your career and share your aspirations. This means that when HR hear about “off the grid” opportunities like secondments or projects, they can spot when you’d be interested, and suggest you if they think you’re the right person.

TAKE AWAY
To take a leaf out of Finding Nemo’s book – HR are friends, not food! Enlisting HR support is one of the most useful things you can do for your career.