Starting My First HR Job: What Should I Know and Avoid as a New Coordinator?

I am hoping that you can help. I start a new job on Monday as an HR Coordinator at a county government agency (100+ employees at 5 locations). The agency boss is a second-term elected official who has been re-elected a third time to another post that starts in 17 months. I have never worked in HR before, but I have tons of business experience (mid-careerist), and I have a BSBA and an MHA. My supervisor is the Number 2 at the agency and has worked there for 39 years. She is going to train me in her former HR duties.

Seeking Advice for a New HR Career

What advice can you offer as I begin this new career? What are the pitfalls I should avoid? What should I be reading or studying? Thank you in advance.

Regards,
D.B.

Question About HR Hiring Practices

Can I ask a question? You were interviewed and obtained a job as an HR Coordinator. Yet you know nothing about HR???

How does that work? How do you get through an interview about an HR job without demonstrating any knowledge whatsoever of HR? Exactly what questions were you asked in your interview? Forgive me, but I am both flabbergasted by this and curious.

Every day on CiteHR, there are numerous postings about high attrition rates, requests for ideas to keep staff happy, complaints about recruiting suitable staff, etc.

If anyone in India (and elsewhere in the world) wonders why staffing and recruitment are so fraught with problems, then here is a perfect example of WHAT NOT TO DO.

On the outset, let me clarify that I'm based in Mumbai, India, and may not be fully aware of the way of working in the U.S. As a side note, your mention of a county government agency reminded me of parks and recreation... :D

Jokes apart, as you are a mid-careerist, you may not need any advice on how to manage change in your current job. Nevertheless, I'd request you to keep an open and non-judgmental attitude while learning in this new job.

Regards.

John has a perfectly valid query—guess you need to bring about some clarity about how, in the first place, you were hired for a position about which you know nothing.

Main Query: Aspects in Your Favor

You already have at least TWO aspects going for you:

1. You have someone who is identified to train you on-the-job. If you go through this forum, you will realize how fortunate you are in this aspect. Many HR persons literally go mad with none to guide but having to bear the complete HR load—and that's where this forum comes in handy for them.

2. Your trainer is number 2—so fewer conflicting situations that you need to handle—meaning you can totally focus on your learning part.

But first and foremost, you need to keep your mind TOTALLY OPEN to learn and possibly de-learn/relearn some of what you already may know. Unless you inculcate this attitude, it wouldn't help even if the topmost HR guy is there as your trainer—and if you already have this trait, that would be Aspect #3 going for you.

Being a mid-career person, maybe this doesn't need to be told—nevertheless, it helps to keep in mind that you will need to be ready to work extra during the learning period.

And a last point: NEVER hesitate to make mistakes, since that's where one learns from.

All the best.

Regards,
TS

Aussiejohn, thank you for your comments. From a short blurb on a thread, it may be challenging for a reader to gather enough information to understand the whole picture. There are many variables that go into a situation like this. So it may be best not to make assumptions about a person's background without learning more about the reasons that this decision was made. I never said that I didn't know anything about HR; I said that I had not worked in an HR position before. In fact, I do know a lot about HR. I mentioned that I am a mid-careerist, so that tells a reader that "it's not my first rodeo," so to speak.

I am a former business owner, and I am highly experienced in all types of insurance, retirement, and benefits plans. My education in business and health care administration meets or exceeds the requirements of the job description. I am leaving another government agency, so I have the government reporting and regulatory experience that they were looking for. My goal for this post is to glean insights from others so that I don't make the same mistakes. I prefer to research and learn from others who are experienced so that I don't have to "reinvent the wheel."

Thank you again for your contribution to this thread. I am still interested to hear about your experiences and insights, so please elaborate on the answers to my questions in the original post. Every person has some original knowledge to offer, and I am always looking for that "nugget" in everyone I meet.

Regards, D.B.

The first question that came to my mind on seeing this post was, "Why this newfound interest?" I sat down for a while to think, and this is what flashed through my mind...

The Nature of Successful Managers

The world has seen a lot of managers so far, and it also has a lot of managers now. Yet, it is very difficult to pinpoint the managers of the world and tell what makes them succeed and what they should have in common. If so, what and how much in common, because they employ vastly different styles and focus on different goals to get the results they want.

Survival, therefore, is the motivating force which is perhaps a common factor for most. Yet few, in fact, very few, break away even from that and go forward because they take more risks in their careers and their lives too. It's these people who take high risks that succeed most and go on to become leaders of their pack—often even end up becoming leaders like Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.

They break away from a traditional mindset and all rules of conventional wisdom. They believe that a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They work just on their strengths, and they never try to overcome their weaknesses. They consistently disregard the Golden Rule. For them, it's only Personal Excellence, which is perhaps the most important of all invisible and intangible assets that they acquired.

Congratulations and Best Wishes

Firstly, congratulations to you for risking a change mid-career, and my best wishes to you for the very best in your new job.

You've said, "I am a former business owner, and I am highly experienced in all types of insurance, retirement, and benefits plans. My education in business and health care administration meets or exceeds the requirements of the job description."

DB, the message and the tone suggest to me the amount of humility you have; I see that this in itself is a positive trait. The other aspect is your openness in asking for help despite your experience, which suggests you are a good learner and you care for both personal and professional development. I say this from my own experience.

With all the humility I can summon—I have to state that even newcomers, I mean the ones who are trying to make a career, also do not ask openly what you are asking for. They are either shy or they think they know it already. There is another dimension to this; they might even think that they should be given all this without asking, meaning if we employ them, it becomes our business to equip them for their future in all aspects. No investment from their side except the favor of their time, and that too unaccounted.

So you see there are a few distinct traits in you which are ones that can help you a great deal going forward—your "simplicity," "attitude," "honesty," "initiative," "trust," etc. I've got to confess I do not know you before; however, these are not assumptions, but things I can make out by your request and response.

Achieving Personal Excellence

Going on to achieving personal excellence in your business or industry requires lifelong dedication. Therefore, one suggestion to you would be to keep building your intellectual assets.

Since you haven't been specific about what you are looking for, either HR experience or practice, it will be a little far-stretched to imagine what pitfalls you might encounter. I would leave you now with just this information that this forum has an "abundance of unbelievable intellectuals and talent" who are ever willing to offer help when wanted. The only hint I might throw at this point is that you ought to be "specific" about what you want to get information, advice, or clarity on. You can be assured you will get more than you asked for in terms of quantity, quality, and the variants.

My contact details are below should you want to keep in touch.

Regards

Let me try to explain where I am coming from with this. I am not disputing your experience, knowledge, career to date, or anything like that. However, in your posting, you ask for help from CiteHR members on HR matters. You also state that you have never worked in HR before, and the current incumbent is going to train you in how to do the job.

To me at least, those statements imply that you do not have the necessary skills or experience to sit at that desk at 9 am on Monday morning and start work on basic HR tasks in that job. I accept that you will need to be trained in specific policies relating to that agency, but there are common HR tasks that do not vary from organization to organization.

We discuss over and over again here on CiteHR the mechanics of recruitment and selection, and you can refer back to my many postings on this subject. In this time-pressured world we live in, one of the basic tenets of recruitment is to find people who have the necessary skills and experience to do the job. There are other variables, of course; will they fit our culture, do they have the initiative and drive to bring new ideas and new ways of working, are they trainable, etc.

I think it is fair to say that managers are now very busy people. Many are working in pressured conditions as companies downsize and expect more work from fewer people. A lot of managers do not have time to train staff anymore. They need people who can hit the ground running as soon as they complete their onboarding in the new company.

Now, if I had been the manager at this agency you are joining, I would have a position description for the job of HR Coordinator, and I would also have a person specification for the job. The position description would state the various duties expected of the successful candidate. This might include payroll, dealing with all types of leave, training coordination, performance plans, staff welfare, etc. I am not familiar with Indian HR, so I am just guessing here. But these are just examples for the purpose of the exercise.

I have not seen your CV, but if you applied for this position and I did not find any of those things listed in your CV, then I would not have even given you an interview. Why would I? You do not have the experience and skills I need.

If by some strange chance you did make it to an interview with me, you would have been faced with many behavioral-based interview questions, relating solely to those HR skills that I needed, plus a few others based on problem-solving, initiative, teamwork, etc. I do not interview asking stupid questions about how many windows there are in the Taj Mahal, where you want to be in 5 years, or what sort of animal you would be.

I hope that helps explain why I am so puzzled by your appointment. This is not the first time I have commented on this situation. We have had many cases on CiteHR of people obtaining jobs to which they appear to have absolutely no idea about or skills to do. We have lots more cases of people asking for help on basic matters that they should know the answer to given the job they are doing.

My background is office administration, and most of my career has been spent in Government administration. But like you, I know a lot about HR, but have never worked in HR. I have never, and would never apply for a job in HR, simply because I cannot demonstrate the skills needed. Knowing and doing are two different things. I would never consider fronting up for an interview and just try to bluff my way through it. I value my credibility far more highly than to do something like that.

India is now at a crossroads; it is developing rapidly, and its requirement for highly trained and experienced staff is growing at an exponential rate. Many organizations will not have the luxury of taking unskilled staff and trying to train them. We are already seeing this in other parts of the world.

The job seekers who will be most successful in the future are the ones who are "job-ready" and can walk into a new office at 9 am on Monday morning and hit the ground running. I suspect the time is coming when prospective employers will be willing to pay well for those sorts of people.

Thank you for your wonderful reply. I suspect they hired me this way on purpose. I think they wanted a "blank slate," someone without preconceived ideas that must somehow be unlearned. They also hired me from the "outside" and did not promote from within. I have heard some talk that this is a very unusual move from this particular management team. I think they want to keep control of the power side of the equation (at least in the one-year time frame) and make me the task completer, paper shuffler, mouthpiece...whatever you want to call it. That's why I think they just want me to train under Number 2. Number 2 will still be the decision-maker for the foreseeable future. After that, they may decide I deserve more control. I don't know because it was only my first day!

Challenges of Being Job-Ready

"Job-ready" is hard to find unless students have broad access to internships and fellowships. Finding those is competitive, and it is rare to get one. It is hard to hit the ground running these days because of the paradox: if you get the education, then they say you don't have the experience. And if you get the experience, they can't promote you because you don't have the diploma. Also, don't forget that this is a highly charged political environment with all kinds of who-knows-what going on behind the scenes!

I didn't bluff through the interview at all. It was crystal clear from my application that I had not held an HR position in the past. I was honest about my past experience, so I can only deduce that they wanted a fresh new start. I am okay with that. I am rolling with it. You all are so awesome to offer your help and advice! Thank you.

Regards,
D.B. :-P

BTW DB—where are you located? USA or India? And your hunch about the reason(s) for hiring you may be right after all—'think they wanted a "blank slate," someone without pre-conceived ideas that must somehow be unlearned'.

Sometimes, when the organizational experience is bad or not so good, they begin to think out of the box. In your case, they seem to have noticed (at least that's my surmise) some traits that go with handling people, issues, and presence of mind—to have which one doesn't need to be an HR guy. The actual competencies needed for a hardcore HR function can be taught, but the soft skills are really tough to be taught or trained (at the most the existing soft skills can be fine-tuned). One needs to have them inherently.

An analogy of this way of filling up positions would be found in companies where the head honchos or critical functions are selected this way.

All the best.

Regards, TS

I am in the USA. Yes, I do believe they wanted someone without any prior work, social, or political affiliations, probably to prevent conflicts of interest. I am being taught the hard skills—only the ones they want me to know. I believe that they want to keep the power, and that's fine with me. They needed my soft skills more, as I am friendly and warm.

Adapting to the New Job

I know that I will need to be thick-skinned in this job because I think they want a mouthpiece and a paper shuffler who will do all the necessary dirty work. I am already starting to get a feel for the culture, and I sense a lot of fear among the employees so far, even after just two days. I have been told not to trust anyone, to keep my boss calm, and to keep my head down. I am not looking forward to having to fire people, but I will learn how they want that done too.

I am still seeking your input, everyone. Thanks so much!

Regards,
D.B.

I'm shocked, to say the least, to read what your organization wants from you or expects you to handle. The mandate you seem to have is not encouraging at all; I hope this doesn't hamper your future.

Everybody talks about the best HR practices, which is good, but merely bringing in the best cannot give the desired results if some bad HR practices coexist in the organization, especially the one you are engaged with.

Do not think that I am being sarcastic, but honestly, this is the interpretation from what I perceive from your mail.

1. Do not even try to close the gap between the management and the employees, and you are to ensure that.

2. You don't fire anyone; they will go out on their own, or else learn quickly how to do this.

3. Retention is one area where you have no tension at all because people will never be allowed to build any passion or purpose in the workplace.

4. Show no difference between "rank" and "yank," for if you ever coach, you might develop people, and if you do, they will begin to like the organization. When they do, they will develop some passion, and that's going to discomfort you.

5. Encourage a diverse environment so that no one will ever feel included, for if they do, it will discomfort you.

6. Do not go out to reach or rescue any overwhelmed employee, for if you do anything like that, you will simplify the work environment, which will improve "life and work balance," and that's not what anyone wants, isn't it?

7. Doing all this will ensure that your career will not accelerate the development of HR in you or the professionals who work with you, for if you do, you might all turn out to become skilled business consultants, and that's not what the organization wants.

All that I have listed here are pretty poor practices; please do not fall into this trap. Work to the opposite of all this.