Is human resources as bad as everyone says it is?

HR is a great field to go into. You get to help shape the organization, impact people's career, pay, and performance, and partner with leadership to build a team and organization that works well. You learn to understand how your business works, how it makes money, how to hire the right people for the right job at the right time. Every day is different. One day your recruiting for a high level Info Sec role that pays six figures - and be surprised how hard it is to fill it and then the next day your in a training class with a case study about a crisis that's happening right in the moment. You'll get tears of joy, tears of happiness and tears of frustration. So you have to be a coach, counselor, and teacher who can communicate well, often, and quickly. People will get angry with your decisions, but then realize it's the best thing to do. You can be an HR generalist, specialist, or coordinator; a compensation specialist, a recruiter, HR information systems analyst, benefits manager, VP of Learning & Development, HR Business Partner, and more. There are plenty of specialty areas within Human Resources.

It's a fulfilling job that has major impact to a business, but it's a thankless job that helps everyone. HRRocks Good luck! hrrocks

HR can be a real partner or it can be horrible. Depends on 1) the leader and 2) the employee with whom you work. As far as I am concerned, accounting is THE degree. It opens you to any field you want. Get your CPA. You can teach, work in finance, or auditing, or as someone I know the railroad! Good luck.

Renee –

I found HR is a great field to go into. I am a seasoned HR Professional; meaning I have worked in the field for 25+ years. There are so many areas of HR to consider: Benefits, Compensation, Staffing, Training, Labor Relations, to Strategic HR Business Partner, etc. You get to partner with business Leaders to shape the organization as well as build the team. While you are partnering with your client Leader you gain a broader understanding of the whole business/company.  The more experience you gain the more opportunity to get involved in different avenues of HR and the business overall. The key to success as an HR Professional is to be able build relationships to that you are a trusted advisor. It is important to know upfront that you won’t always be able to “make people happy” because sometimes you will tell your leaders “no” because that is best for them and the business overall. No job is “great” every day and HR is no different.  I have found HR to be a fulfilling job with major impact to the business, Good luck!

I have just switched into this field (from a strategy / business consulting career) a few years back and it's been the best move of my life. IMO the right approach to HR (which is where most companies seem to be going) is to realize it's a strategic priority and, when done right, can be a huge competitive advantage. If you think about it, people are THE scarce resource these days (computing power and capital are abundant, they used to be more scarce) and companies are really investing in making sure their employees learn, stay, and are able to be productive. That's where HR comes in! If you are entering the field, I'd encourage you to ask the company what their approach is to HR. If they still see it as a back-office function more focused on compliance, then I'd avoid it; find a company who realizes the power of investing in employees and building a great culture. And you'll have a great career!

There are some positive examples herein from HR professionals that are credible.

I will say, to balance the discussion, that some college students believe that HR jobs deal entirely with helping employees and thus are entirely cheery working environments. However, a HR professional works for the executive management of the company. In times of downsizing/layoffs, employee termination or lawsuit, these environments can be contentious and the department/employee may not necessarily be viewed as "pro-employee."

It'd be good to get a viewpoint on the life-stage of the company, their recent history with potential layoffs or employee lawsuits, and (like any job) how much turnover they've had in the department.

The real question is:  Do you like helping employees?  Do you like working with people?  Human Resources is a wide field and can include training and educating employees, hiring and firing workforces, payroll, performance management, benefits, diversity and inclusion, and so much more!  What do YOU want to do??  What are your skills? 

Every single career has good and bad. It's a matter of degrees and balance - do they good days outweigh the bad? As an HR professional you get to do some pretty great things - hire people and give them jobs, give them career advice that can lead to a promotion, announce a raise or a great bonus, have influence over the benefits and rewards you can implement. These are pretty awesome things to do every day.

But there are times you have to have a negative conversation with someone, or you make a decision that someone doesn't agree with, or there isn't enough budget to put into place everything you want. Degrees and balance!

No job has 100% daily satisfaction - unless maybe you want to serve ice cream all day - that's puts smiles on a lot of faces.