HR Resourcing is Digby Morgan’s contingent HR recruitment company focusing on entry to mid level appointments. The man responsible for running it, Matthew Chester, takes a look at the career opportunities for junior HR professionals in the shared services era.

“The career path of an HR professional has changed significantly as a result of the shared service model - namely Ulrich - and good recruitment consultants have to play an integral part in shaping careers providing both a catalyst for the process and opportunities for personal development. Traditionally, the HR career followed a generalist, coalface route whereby you gained good solid experience on a graduate scheme working across the many HR functions earning hands-on/operational experience across the generalist base.

“With the advent of shared services, however, we have found that high potential HR professionals often find that they start off working for either a specialist area of HR or within a shared service delivery centre. Yes there are good skills to be gained from this experience, as Jane Saunders discusses in her article ‘Cobbler’s Shoes’ elsewhere in this newsletter. However, HR professionals often miss out on the raw, operational, HR generalist experience. At the start of an HR professional’s career, candidates should be looking to work across the whole HR lifecycle, influencing their client groups and gaining a full insight into the various areas of HR. The shared service model restricts this as either you end up specialising too early or you end up advising on policy and process rather that acting on the advice yourself. The best form of counsel comes from personal, hands-on experience and it’s this operational or tactical know-how that leads to strategic expertise or advice - not the other way around.

The HR Business Team

“The progressive HR function of today is positioning itself as more of a ‘business team’ with an HR specialism rather than just ‘personnel’ which historically has been more of a back office function. HR is, therefore, becoming more commercial and HR professionals need to have a good grounding of operational generalist experience and be strong influencers through effective communication and front office relationship management. The shared service model does not often offer this grounding. We find that candidates who have found themselves working within the shared service model find it difficult to get that raw, operational experience which leads to the opportunity to become a more business focused HR business partner.

“This is where we, at HR Resourcing, can help. We believe that a good 70% of our role is to match a candidate’s personality with the culture of the company and this means that we can often find that we’re in the position of being able to help shared service candidates bridge the gap from the shared service environment to a more operational role. And, this is only possible due to the enduring quality of our relationships with both client and candidate”.

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