by Rosemary Letson

Created on: August 07, 2010

Human Resources is an exciting profession that offers a variety of careers in the following areas:  Recruitment & Retention, Employee Relations or Labor Industrial Relations, Training & Development, Compensation, Benefit Administration, Payroll and Safety.   Depending upon the size of the company determines whether an individual specializes in one of the above areas.   

About the Profession

Typically, if the organization is small, they employ Human Resources generalists with strong working knowledge in more than one of the above areas while mid-size to large companies employ specialists.   Most employers require their Human Resources managers and team members to hold a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree plus a national certification.  Please click on the Society of Human Resources Management at www.shrm.org for details regarding the specific designations. 

Human Resources professionals frown on the word Personnel.  The reason, many employers for decades viewed the department nothing more than an administrative function.   However, with the overwhelming passage of employment legislation in the United States over the past thirty years, such as IRCA, COBRA, FMLA, ERISA, FRCA, Civil Rights Act, FLSA, ADA, OSHA, the move toward global markets, and the wave of downsizing, re-engineering, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, and layoffs, Personnel Administration has evolved from a paper-pushing department into a full fledge partner in corporate America, managing their human resources and assuring compliance with federal and state employment laws.   

Each Human Resources function has specific federal and state laws and guidelines they must comply with, and that, in itself, can be another article.  Therefore, only the law(s) with the highest importance will be identified under each topic. 

Recruitment & Retention

This area is also known as Talent Acquisition.  The job title most commonly used is Recruiter or Talent Acquisition Specialist.  The position is responsible for generating leads, identifying, interviewing, and selecting applicants most suitable for the position, then referring them onto the hiring manager to interview and make the final decision as to who to hire.  In some organizations, due to office demographics and/or minimal staffing HR levels, they may hire an outside firm to coordinate their recruitment efforts or have their in-house recruiters

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