Starting an HR Career: Which Domain Should I Choose for the Best Kickoff?

I am pursuing an MBA in HR specialization. To start a career in HR, which domain will be helpful for me.

Can you provide me with detailed information about that domain so that it can be a good start to my career?

Students usually start with recruitment or talent acquisition profiles as these are the most common jobs in the market for freshers, offering low to medium salary packages. Additionally, there are numerous recruitment agencies willing to hire young students.

However, ask yourself these questions first:
1. Are you good at convincing people?
2. Do you really want to spend the whole day hiring?
3. Do you find recruiting people for new jobs really interesting?

If you choose to start with a generalist role, jobs are fewer, but you will learn recruitment, training, and admin work. Basically, you will soon be trained to become an all-rounder in this profile as you multitask with different tasks at hand.

You need to consider your level of interest, not just what the market has to offer. Do what you love the most. Probably, in your internship, you must have had experience with recruitment handling. Did you enjoy that?

Wish you all the best.

Thanks and Regards,
Akash Sharma

Understanding Recruitment and Generalist Profiles

You need to understand that both recruitment and generalist profiles are demanding in their respective fields. There are various recruitment consultancies that train freshers on calling skills, candidate interactions, closing profiles within TAT, dealing with client portfolios, etc. However, there might be instances where a few candidates would not turn up for the interview. In such cases, you would need to take the blame for it, but if you manage to close the profile, then the incentive schemes designed for you would be awesome.

The Role of a Generalist

On the other hand, the generalist role prepares you to manage different fields of HR. You would need to improve on time management, people skills, and data reporting, which would mean hands-on skills required in Excel/Word/PPT.

Scope of HR Analytics

HR Analytics has good scope, but it is a more senior profile. You would be expected to suggest better HR processes/policies, have an understanding of the business requirements within the company and employee goals. You need to be hands-on with data management, predictive analytics, tools used for data analytics, and an expert in reports and MIS. Management will not wait for you to settle down; they would expect you to deliver from day one since the role calls for excellent knowledge in interpreting data to choose the correct course of action, maximizing efficiency in job roles, and being hands-on in metrics/Excel/HRIS/dashboards/scorecards/analytics tools, etc.

Thanks and Regards,
Akash Sharma