Career paths in the people profession

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hi everybody i'm going to kick us off sorry i'm one minute late i couldn't see that it was recording but now it is
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i hope everybody is well and thank you very much for joining us this afternoon my name is katie jacobs i work at the
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cipd and i am delighted to be hosting this third session in our series that is all about helping
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you to build your career in the people profession throughout this series we've been
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providing you with the advice and practical guidance you need to make 2021 a personal success
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hearing from the people who've been there we've also been trying to make these sessions as interactive as possible so there's going
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to be lots of opportunities to ask questions and to connect with each other as well
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in our previous webinars we've explored how you break into the people profession and how you move on and move up today
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i'm sure we're going to touch on some of that again but our focus is on the diverse and varied career paths
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available in this amazing profession how you can pick the right one for you and how you can make a success of it
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we are very lucky to have a really fantastic panel who have a wealth of different experiences in the people
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profession which they're going to share with you i am joined by nelly bustani senior director of human
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capital management value advisory mina for sap david de souza
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membership director at the cipd michelle raymond is managing director of
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her own consultancy the people's partner and mel steele founder of people change expertise
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who works mainly in the interim market thank you everyone for joining us today
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as ever i'm just going to run through some housekeeping very quickly the webinar is being recorded it will be
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available on demand after this session although you can see some slides now
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there will not be any slides when we actually get into the discussion because we're going to run it as an interactive panel
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and that means we need your questions so please do get them in from the start you can use the q a function which you
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can see at the bottom of your screen can i use um ask you to use that if you want me to put any questions to the
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panel but i can already see that people are making use of the chat function um and please do use that to connect
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with each other to talk among yourselves to swap tips and stories we'd have so much activity on there
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people connecting and networking adding each other on linkedin it's been really really great to see so please do make the most of it over the
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next hour and that's the whole point of attending something like this live we have loads of great resources around
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careers for you to access our cipd careers hub where you can find a host of brilliant
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interactive tools including a cv optimization tool we have our careers clinic
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on the cipd community where you can get advice from your fellow people professionals and not forgetting our amazing branch
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network which is a really really great way to volunteer that helps you to build your skills as well as your network
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these are really tough times so i'm going to flag our well-being helpline again we're working with award-winning
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workplace well-being provider health assured to provide our members in the uk and ireland with free advice from qualified
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therapists you can also access the my healthy advantage app which provides well-being
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tools designed to be used at any time anywhere to improve your mental and physical health and finally just a flag that if
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you missed the previous two webinars in this series they are available on demand i'm sure my colleagues will put a link
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to those in the chat um and that we have one more session after this on the 22nd of february which is specifically around cipd
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qualifications so if you want to ask our experts from the cipd any questions about quals
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then please do sign up for that all right that's enough housekeeping let's get on with it
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one of the many brilliant things about people profession is the range of career paths it offers
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from climbing the ladder in-house into a corporate hrd job to specializing in an area you're really
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really passionate about whether that's od lnd reward dni to pursuing a self-employed career as an
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interim or independent consultant or as david showed even coming to work at the cipd
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if you get really desperate and there is nothing else out there for you but how can you decide what route is
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right for you what skills and attributes do you need to be successful in these various types of role
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our panel are going to share their stories and take your questions but before i come on to that i'm going to ask all of the panel just to share a
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little bit about their own career journeys to date and some brief insight on why they chose the route they did and
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mel can i ask you to kick us off please yeah of course hi everyone thanks for
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joining katie and david thanks for having me along so um i'm a very passionate career interim um
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i set my business about six seven years ago and i specialize in people change and it's called people
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change expertise so what it says on the tin um what does that actually mean in reality well it
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can range anything from modernizing people functions leading business transformation and
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change consulting on people projects where there's some issues or maybe
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just offering advisory services to business folk i'm also a non-accept
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director currently at the british retail consortium so that's been a little bit busy over the
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last few months more so than maybe what i was expecting and what did i do
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before i started up my own business i held a number of hr director program change roles
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in various sectors both in public and private sector so i guess
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i come with multiple badges i quite like to kind of if someone tells
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me you probably can't do that in a sector in a work way i probably have tried
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and hopefully has smashed through some of those uh barriers that people told me about
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thanks well i can confirm multiple hats very stylishly um nelly could i ask you to go next
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sure and thanks again for the invitation to be part of this panel so um i started my career unlike
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the traditional way in hr in computer science so i'm by profession a
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computer programmer um and then i moved i studied of course few years in as a
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system analyst and then discovered the world of hr when i started work
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working on my master's in business administration and my real career in hr started in 2000
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when i moved to dubai with siemens i spent seven years with
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siemens as the regional hr director for the middle east operation then moved to nokia network so a bit of
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a spent there four years again in regional roles
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and i've been with sap for the past 10 years started as the regional hr director and
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led the growth of sap in the middle east and africa region
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but two years ago i took a bold move and stepped out from the main hr
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profession to do hr advisory focusing on digital transformation so
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in my current role i'm more customer facing helping customers you know connect
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business and technology in order to accelerate their hr transformation
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thank you and i can see from the chat there's a few other people who also started off in uh in the tech space but
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then realized that people were more interesting than technology or at least as interesting michelle hello
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i'm michelle raymond i'm a hr consultant and trainer so i'm the independent uh consultant
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here and it's really good to hear everybody's stories because i started off in-house hr
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first i started off as an as an administrator and i worked myself up worked my way up
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but what happened i was at an organization and i was made redundant while i was on
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maternity leave i had no consultation uh they didn't uh you know tell me what the criteria was
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and i made a pact that if i really get to understand what hr is really about
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this will never happen again to anyone i'll make sure it never happens again so i got really
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involved into hr i did my cipd then i did my masters
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and cipd did all the qualifications and while i was working i noticed that a couple of my friends
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were saying oh michelle can you help us uh find a new role can you um help us review
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this job description of this contract so i started helping employees and that's what i wanted to do
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then i realized that employees didn't have enough money for me to pay for my mortgage so i thought let me work for an employer
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but to bring great value to the employer so that they can in turn help the employees
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and that's how i got into the consultancy working with employers and making sure that they have
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the right policies and procedures but i wanted to make sure that employers have been upskilled developed
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were being treated fairly and so that's where i am today and i've been running uh my consultancy the people's
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partner now for more than four years and now we dedicate ourselves to
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policy implementation uh change management and training so that's my story so far
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thanks michelle and congratulations in turning a really awful terrible experience into something positive for not only you but hopefully
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other people as well um and david do you want to share your own experiences
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uh yeah so and i'll speak for less later but i'll try and do this story as quickly as i can so uh when i was 18 i was
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at university uh my dad um had a severe work related breakdown
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and several members of my family were ill i couldn't cope so i dropped out of university of mental health issues i
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went to stack shelves uh very determined that i wouldn't ever have a career in anything because like it seemed like that was the way to
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end up in a bad way um eventually i became a bit bored and i got the opportunity to work in
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recruitment and induction initially for the retailer i was working with then i went and worked in a contact centre because it felt a bit too much
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like a grown-up career was happening and it was probably when i was about 30 and i was working in a contact center
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doing a project on employer retention uh an hrd that i knew took me to one
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side and said you're basically wasting your career and it isn't a choice between uh working hard and losing your grip on
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family um and so it was probably only in 30 that i started actively merging my career and doing anything
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i guess positive and proactive with it and after that and i moved down to london for family
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reasons and i had a year working for startup bank and i was awful at my job just to be really clear
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with everyone that you can stink and then come back from the mix really wasn't very good it didn't work out for me um and then i went
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independent for kind of four or five years so i built up enough experience doing enough things that actually people wanted to hire me to solve problems for
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them and after that um i came to the cipd so i decided that actually it was a big
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train set there in terms of working working lives and i could probably impact some of that so uh so that's my story none of it
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planned so if anyone here is going i don't have a plan absolutely fine it can work out and i've
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made massive mistakes in my career so just to be really clear and everything's recoverable
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thank you dave i can see that people in the chat are responding to that and finding that incredibly reassuring
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so thank you all for sharing um really really interesting diverse career paths there and ways into the
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profession i can see we've got quite a lot of questions um coming in already but i'm just gonna ask a couple of my own
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first i'd like to ask um mel and michelle as self-employed professionals what do you
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think are the attributes you need to make that a success um and what kind
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of drove you to make that decision and mel can i start with you yeah okay um
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well i think for me uh the assumption was when you when you go into him that i
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mess more more holiday i must want to spend more time with my kids um etc i don't have any kids and i've
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had less holiday since i've been doing this than before so i guess to bust some of those myths
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for me it was about um breaking away from being an employee and doing a
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change and transformation i found that really freeing to be able to do it without getting
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contained within the politics of an organization so i felt it completely free to be able
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to give a you know professional views and guidance thank goodness they
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seem to want that too um because i've had quite a few clients who have respected that
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um so for me um not being accountable uh in the system if i can
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call it that and then having accountability for my promotion my future
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um seem to set me free and i guess for me when i look back on my career i've
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always had a high level of independence so i've never wanted really i've never
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joined an organization and think okay i can have a career forever in here i've always thought what can i give what
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can i get back um so i think being self-employed you know you do need that high level of
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independence because there's many things that you don't get obviously um and you've got to find them
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from elsewhere so yeah i'd say one of the key things for me is having a high level of independence michelle what about you
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yeah i've got to agree with mel i think the independence is one of the main
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attributes of being self-employed and i also have to expand on that to say when you are
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employed those who are self-employed tell you that oh you should run your own business
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you shouldn't be working for somebody you're working to build somebody else's dreams and
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uh everybody gets into that mode oh i want to be self-employed i want to have financial freedom i want to have control
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over everything but once you do get into self-employment you see it's not exactly
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the way that everybody sold the dream but what i have tried to do is uh try
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and control um what i've enjoyed is being able to control uh what uh what engagements i take on i
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can say no without repercussions i don't have someone saying to me that i have to do it this
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this way i feel there's also a level of respect so when i was in house hr um
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they i would tell them something but if somebody else said it then it's supported it gave them that
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leverage okay yeah michelle knows what she's talking about i when i became self-employed and i actually contracted my services for the
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same company they took my word just like that so there is a level of respect when you become like a contractor or
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you're contracting your services doing the same thing that as you did when you were in a house
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so i i like i like that level of respect it means my basic one of my basic human needs or
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significance i'm just gonna put it out there and um and i think one of the other attributes
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is having a very strong mindset because being self-employed you have to be all
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things in your business and we'll obviously speak about that later but i think having that mindset and not
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uh you know moving away from that imposter syndrome thinking am i good enough
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to really do this can i make enough money out of this so there's lots of things that you have to look at
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but i think it's definitely an option for people to consider if
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they've got the right mindset and the right network around them thank you michelle um nelly
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um you've obviously worked in a lot of large corporate roles doing various different things and
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got a question here from sally who says she's trying to move from 20 years of operational leadership
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and transformation into hr um she's in a footsie 100 she's finding that quite a difficult
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transition um kind of get into there could you offer any advice and you said you made the move from kind of i.t into hr perhaps
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when you're hiring into your own teams how can people transition out of one area of the business into another
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yeah um if i understood the question correctly the current background is operations okay
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look i think um for me there is there isn't let's say no magic formula right i think what what
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once needs to understand is what are the direction of that organization and what are the
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possibilities that are there in hr and and what's there on their hr transformation journey and how can i fit
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in even if i don't necessarily today have all the skills required or the knowledge i mean
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the knowledge can be built but do i have the right attitude do i see eye to eye with with the with the
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direction um so i have personally hired
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people onto my team that didn't necessarily come from an hr background because i value diversity of perspective
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and of skills so i'm not sure if that answers the question but i think it pretty much depends on the organization but happy to
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um to connect you know after the call to have a more person like one-to-one conversation
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thank you and david can i ask you for any advice on that as well kind of making that move it's kind of later in your career
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probably are quite experienced you probably have worked at a leadership or at least management level yeah so there's two elements one for
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everyone on this kind of webinar as you get more senior in your uh kind of career make sure that you give
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people opportunities to move pan sector because it's one where everyone bemoans the lack of it but then they choose the
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person that seems most convenient because they've got their skill set so you're going to have to kind of role model and lead on that i think um
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there's something about understanding your own transferable skills and being able to kind of sell those effectively in but i also know that's quite a stock
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answer for just about any job and i think it depends on the employer but most of the advice i give to anyone is
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it depends on the network as well if you can get someone who really believes in you then you've got a chance of carving out an opportunity
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be it through project work and other elements but otherwise it can be unnecessarily difficult to get
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recognition for the skills and the career that you've already had thank you
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um and we've got a few questions of people trying to get that kind of first expert that first bit of experience um
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and david i'll come back to you first on that since that's what we were talking about anyway but how how do you
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actually break in so networks are really underrated so the
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branch network you flashed up earlier katie there's an opportunity there to get exposure get mentored by people have
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people looking out for you it's far easier particularly in what is going to be quite a difficult recruitment market
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to do that so i know there are lots of questions around quals today is this enough and do you know what to
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some extent sometimes it's necessary but not sufficient so it's really important you get calls and you get your background your
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structure but you also need the networks you need the positioning of your cv all of those things and you need the
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ability at times to see sideways moves or moves into sectors that you wouldn't have expected working in that will get
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you those skills and experience it could then show to someone else so it would be naive of me and unhelpful to
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say it's not difficult and tricky at the moment but the first moves are possible but normally someone who gets their first
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break has either had to be very persistent and i know that's difficult and all they've had to be very lucky in terms of the
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people around them who give them that break in that space thank you and a specific um question
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nelly that kind of builds on that but um for you somebody's asking about securing that job actually in your
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market in the uae what's it like out there do you have any specific advice for working in that market
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i think it's it's currently a bit challenging uh given you know the the current um
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you know the the how do you say the results of the of the pandemic on a lot of industries and i think it's not
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specific to the uae but generally speaking there has been a bit of a of a hold in in terms of
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movement but there are still some organizations that are still recruiting for specific roles especially
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organizations that have progressed for example their hr transformation and now are looking
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at specific people to lead their employee experience transformation so you might find pockets
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you know in terms of need for for hr professionals in the uae market but it's
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not let's say as open as it used to be but i believe it's not specific to that country in particular
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no i think you're i think you're right there and from the other couple of sessions we've held there was some light at the end of the tunnel according to our recruitment
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experts on here was 2021 should be a better year than 2020 was in terms of job hunting fingers crossed
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um a question specifically about self-employment and put to michelle and mel um harriet
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asks if you endeavor to eventually start up your own hr consultancy business is it recommended that you gain
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experience in a corporate business first um michelle do you want to take that and then i'll come to you mel
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well interesting um i'm gonna come from the perspective of no because i didn't um i think
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there are other skills that you will need to be able to run a consultancy so you obviously need to have
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hr skills and have experience but you do not have to have had them in a corporate environment the other
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skills that's going to work well for you is your your ability to build relationships with people
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your ability to understand their needs and be able to serve their needs
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and when you first start off you almost want to be able to be on tap for your your your clients and then you
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can start spacing out how you serve them but i think there's a number of other attributes and characteristics that will
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make you a great hr consultant running your own your own consultancy you have to have
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some an awareness of finances and invoicing and pitching and proposals
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these are all the other things that come outside of hr as the skill set but these are what make
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you a business owner an entrepreneur in the field of hr so i think uh it's less about working in the
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corporate environment as long as you've got experience and because since i've been doing this and it's coming up to five
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years nobody has ever asked me can they see my qualifications they don't ask me for a cv um they just
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see that i show up on different platforms i get referred a lot and so your character and your
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relationship building is going to be key to you running your hr business fantastic and mel what about you
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yeah i think i think you've got to put yourself in the shoes of the people that would be buying the services so
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what makes you different what are you going to be able to sell to those individuals that they want to
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pay money so to me it's that simple transaction so if you um don't have experience in a
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particular area so say change in transformation but you're trying to sell services
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there is going to be a host of people who have got that experience um likewise if you are an employee
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relations expert and you've done that in different organizations
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it doesn't have to be corporate you might have helped and given your services
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um in third sector public sector wherever it is uh again i think you know it
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think about who's buying those services so i i also think it depends um
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on on the market so um i think this always splits into two that's the sexy stuff if i can call it
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that so there will always be a greater demand for certain so if we think about
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analytics or we think about reward etc you know typically if there's less people who
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have um qualified or have got loads of experience in there there will be a greater need
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uh and similarly if you think about areas like uh training and development there's been
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a a much more uh uh over time uh consultancy has been a
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a much more um specialist area where people have used um external
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consultants and actually many in-house big corporates are looking at how they can leverage
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those amazing people like michelle and and her teams and colleagues uh rather than
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having a big in hand so again i think you need to know your market hr is a broad church um and the people
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function is and think about where it is you want to sell your skills uh what they are thank you mel
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um nelly one for you um jessica asks i'm five years into my role in hr but i'm unsure of my next step um
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what what is your opinion on moving out of hr in order to move back in would it help to get
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some a broader experience i mean it definitely helps and i'm a big advocate of people moving
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out of hr because you know you broaden your perspective you get to understand different parts of the business
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and then go back to hr with an outside in perspective more from you know having experienced
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hr as a consumer of the services and as a customer rather than someone who's
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delivering the services and that always brings in a lot of insights and enhancement one of the key
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skills you know that are needed in hr is really that business acumen and being
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understanding really how who are the customers of your organization how does the organization make money
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and how everything you do in hr influences that positively or negatively
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and being able to articulate that in the business language and that transition i think is very
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valuable and how have you found you're working in a customer-facing role now how's that
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been for you in terms of broadening your hr experience i mean it helped me definitely get out
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of my comfort zone because i have been let's say in the hrd role for eight years already it helped me work on
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different muscles and similar to what michelle mentioned earlier it's that exposure to
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different customers maturity level different industry challenges of course everyone in hr has to align with the business has
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to recruit on board develop retain and engage employees and ensure their
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well-beings and so on but the flavors of those different industries is
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those nuances are was i was an eye-opener and i keep learning every day as much
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from the customers as you know as they learned from me as well thank you um we've had a few questions
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in i'm going to try and group them about um kind of specialisms that's generalisms
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um david can i come to you on this and kind of i guess the general question is if you're in a generalist role but
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you've got a passion for specialism how do you make that jump kind of how do you decide
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what works for you is there a way to get into l d if you've never worked in l d before
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yeah so there's probably two two kind of really obvious ways wanted to take projects in that area where they're
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available and second would be kind of shadowing and kind of building up contact but there are normally different ways this
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is going to sound really old to express yourself in a role so to bring your interest and your lens to the role and then to build out
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specialism in that way so you know very early in my career i would have been looking at employee retention but we
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started looking at um why different ethnic minorities different demographics were leaving well
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that you know led us into some work on dna that wasn't specifically in scope and that was you know 10 15 years ago so
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i slightly despair that we haven't made as much progress as it would have voted in the meantime so i think project work is a key making
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it known and building up time for it read widely around it connect to influencers in that space and but it's definitely
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possible to make the label i've done everything except payroll and they wouldn't let me do payroll because no one would ever get paid
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and just chronically unreliable but most other bits i've been allowed to do at some point in my career
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and do you think you can kind of move between them or do you kind of settle on one and that's it i think it depends on the depth so i
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think when you're starting off it's easier actually to to move into some of the more junior roles in them and then bizarrely you have a middle
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portion mel's nodding there's a middle portion where it's quite hard because everyone wants deep specialism and then by time you get to kind of hrd
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or the top end everyone expects you to be able to do everything underneath anyway so it's i'm not entirely sure that makes
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sense in terms of the way that we think about careers but certainly it's easier to get that experience i think at kind of mid-level
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or if you're if your company is big enough to have a kind of fast track program high potential you can quite often pick up you know
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large-scale projects and things that give you experience there thank you um we've got a few questions of people who are feeling a little bit
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stuck so people perhaps have been in hr admin roles for the last um few years and they're trying to take
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that next step up but uh finding the kind of promotion opportunities quite elusive mel give me
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advice on um how to how to get yourself kind of moving up especially given the current context
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yeah i mean i started off um as an administrator i didn't go to university
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um i i i just took whatever that was there so i did i worked in a commercial
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team i worked in a finance team i did whatever i felt could develop i think what nelly and michelle said
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those more generalist business type skills even as an administrator
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and this one always goes down well i i also at the age of 18 i joined a trade
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union and because they were amazing at training um and through that training i got
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opportunities which were beyond what i was allowed to do uh in my administrator role so i got to
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represent uh folk um i got to go to national training
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events etc so i'm not i'm not saying everyone should join a trade union um but there are other uh areas whether
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that's in volunteering uh where actually what i say when you're when you're stuck you can feel like you
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start you can develop those skills outside of your direct um role i think in
31:20
in hr um there's also the thing like with uh big um shared services
31:27
being created so i've worked in a number of organizations where they've had there i think there's been a bit of stigma
31:33
attached to me you know they're so futuristic in there there's so much that you can
31:38
really drive it's not always the most sexy place that everyone but i've talked to people they say i really want to be a talent acquisition
31:45
specialists have to go away and just check out what that might mean in terminology or i want to be a futurist
31:50
in analytics again i just go and check what that actually means maybe for today but i i would i would not discount you
31:57
know if you can see opportunities in something like a share service because what you get to do is experience a lot of different things
32:04
uh under that heading so look for the things that maybe are not billed as the most sexy that's what i
32:10
did in my career and then sometimes you know you're reducing the ratio and then once you get in there you can
32:17
show them what you've got so don't be disheartened uh just think of lots of other ways that you can
32:24
add more experience um to your cv maybe outside of that direct
32:30
role thank you very much mel um and nelly we've got a few kind of similar-ish questions around
32:38
kind of building on what mel was talking about it's about getting that kind of first start people are asking about
32:43
job titles kind of what roles should you be looking at if you're in those first couple of years
32:48
of your career obviously we use lots of really great terminology within hr so what kind of
32:54
stuff should people be looking for look at it i think it depends on really
33:00
what's available and what what they're passionate about but just to reconfirm what mal mentioned like sometimes at the beginning early on
33:08
in your career you have the option to experience a lot of different things before deciding
33:14
which one is the right role for you so my recommendation or encouragement is let's
33:20
say really to look at the different options available there and and start somewhere the other thing
33:26
that is important is the organization you join because um some of the organ some organizations
33:33
are very good at actually taking that early talent and growing
33:38
that talent and allowing the talent to develop inside the organization now that pretty much depends really on
33:45
the available opportunities as well as the market itself and how big is the organization
33:51
set up in that country and what opportunities that it does it uh open
33:58
so you know it can be in hr administration to understand the basics
34:03
of of hr operation you know hr administration sometimes it's in payroll
34:09
but if your career aspiration is to uh to develop more towards hr business
34:15
partnering it would be good to start really by even taking a role in the
34:20
shared services center where you do case management so you have visibility over the hr uh different roles in hr end
34:27
to end and that gives you a good visibility thank you very much um and david we've got kind of again
34:34
building on that some people in smaller organizations who feel perhaps they don't have exposure to the kind of things that
34:39
nelly and mel are speaking about perhaps isn't a shared services center they don't have the opportunity to experience lots of different things
34:45
um what's your view on kind of small businesses large businesses do you need to try
34:52
working in a corporate in order to get that experience um i think there are pros and cons to each so your benefit of working in a
34:59
smaller business can quite often be you get disproportionate access to the ability to work on different things
35:05
because quite often there isn't a dedicated department quite often really early in your career you can get access to the leadership team
35:11
they're thinking in a far more kind of proximate way than someone's working in a different country and you never see them large organizations quite often
35:18
you've got those talent streams set up and you get you get those kind of paths and support in a different way i guess my general
35:24
advice would be work out what you want from your career and then be really open to different options
35:29
because i think people close them down too naturally and i can see some of the ones in the chat my company doesn't do this okay well
35:36
that's fine you might need to find another company and i know that sounds you know easier said than done but actually they're the
35:41
choices people need to face into i was chatting to one of my team a couple of weeks back and i was saying but your career choices are all around
35:48
the copd if you actually think about the world of work you open up different choices and
35:53
in five or ten years time opening up those different doors could be really valuable so sme is great place to learn genuinely
36:00
great place to learn but there are limitations there absolutely the same with you know large corporates
36:05
you've got to take your choices and maybe move between them but only as your career needs thank you very much david um michelle
36:12
i'll put this to you because i know you're very good on this kind of personal branding and um and that kind of thing another
36:19
michelle has asked what platforms work best for promotion i'm launching my hr and coaching consultancy business
36:27
yes so michelle linkedin is going to be your best friend i tell you why you can build your
36:33
personal brand on linkedin and there's a number of things you do it uh you
36:39
you want to build conversations so whenever you put a post out it shows your expertise but
36:47
make it conversational so ask questions get people to engage then you want to start building communities so you have you'll
36:54
start seeing that the same types of people are responding are engaging with your post then get
36:59
into their dms send them a message and say hi i'm really glad that you like my post what about it did
37:05
uh what what about it resonated with you so that's another thing you want to do and and you want to start making sure
37:12
that you're putting out consistent credible content so whatever your aerial expertise
37:18
is start sharing it and then you repost those things so this is what i do so i
37:23
did a training uh last week on uh inclusive leadership and at the end
37:30
of the training somebody had said to me uh i'm so glad you didn't get to ask me so many questions because i don't like
37:37
arts and questions in an open forum i'm very quiet and he didn't always show up on video
37:42
and that led me to think there's not enough information out there around inclusive leadership and not
37:49
judging people by their engagement because they don't show up on camera or they don't ask questions and what i did i just put a
37:55
post about that on linkedin and i've got a couple of people engaging with it and then i'm going to use that
38:01
same post and i'm going to do a video on the same thing and then because people respond to
38:06
different post different ways so i would definitely encourage you to use linkedin put out content consistently and
38:14
consistent could be whatever that means to you could be once a week twice a week but be consistent with it because then people
38:20
get used to seeing your content they want to know what's new in hr world what things should i be aware
38:25
of what um different hr things are coming up that i need to know about so you can become an
38:31
expert in your field so that they find you rather than you keep going out and looking for work
38:37
so it does work thank you very much and see um we are linked in with each other we do put a lot of really great content
38:42
on there and i'm just a drop i know there's loads of questions there's quite a lot of questions about qualls i'm going to leave those just because we have a
38:48
specific question uh session on bowls in a couple of weeks um but we will copy those across to that session um mel andy's asked
38:56
given the vast amount of contracting roles in hr what are the pros and cons of moving from a permanent role to contractual
39:02
roles yeah um so i think for in my experience
39:09
it was a career decision so i didn't move from perm to um contracting
39:15
by that i mean i had a break in between and i'd fallen out of love with the with the people profession a bit and i
39:21
was thinking what could i do i had an early midlife crisis i guess and was thinking maybe there's something else i was
39:27
better at actually after after a couple of months realized i wasn't probably much good at anything else so i had to find a new way with it
39:34
so um i think what i would say is that this is just my experience and
39:39
people think about it differently for me it was it was a massive change it was a massive switch so
39:45
it the way that um that i needed to um think about my my own
39:53
personal financial situation so you know i still have to pay my mortgage i think about how to pay my bills but
39:59
what comes with obviously doing interim work is you you you
40:05
can track the services in different ways so you end up in a situation where you're only as good as the clients that you can
40:11
land and um therefore you you've got to be thinking about how do you financially um set yourself
40:20
up for success not just when it's in buoyant times but when the market changes that's on you
40:25
that's your responsibility to have to do that and um seven years on i think wow it's
40:31
an amazing paycheck every month some people do and whether they do well or not within the thing that feels
40:37
quite alien though so i i think thinking about being really broken you know think about that financial
40:44
situation because actually without it you know you know you're going to get stressed you're going to get worried about how
40:49
how how you're going to be able um to survive i think you have to do that mindset
40:55
shift so um the biggest thing for me which was quite surprising was
41:00
just how much people behave differently so to me i was like yeah i'm setting up
41:07
my new business this is different for me but actually for my network and my peers that that was
41:14
very different for them so you need to think about how do you respond to that how
41:19
you may in your own head think you're just switching from one to the other but actually it's it's really different and and you
41:27
have to stay centered so the things i thought i'd love like running my own business are the things that i
41:33
uh enjoy the least by that i mean um by day i'm providing services to
41:39
clients and by night at weekends i'm doing business development financial returns and i see michelle
41:46
nodding away that you know it's this stuff where you kind of go oh won't this be exciting to
41:52
do but actually you're your own fd your own hrd your own commercial
41:57
director you know all those things that someone else used to do for you you now have to do yourself and
42:04
i believe if you do it right that actually does keep your business solvent as well but it it you know when you just want to
42:09
chillax at the weekend and not have to worry about that stuff it can be a bit of a bind
42:14
so what am i saying and all that i think you know it is a change it's some people do
42:21
flex between one minute they're like okay now i'm perm now i'm not um i think if you're looking
42:27
at it as a career move though is something very different so it's not just a contractual change
42:33
to be successful and have longevity you need to set yourself up for sex
42:38
success less like anyone who's starting to grow a business thank you and get a good accountant i
42:44
assume as well 100 you know you find um
42:50
it's interesting how you like services provided to you um and you want to support small
42:56
businesses so you you you seek out those that understand
43:01
uh you as a person and what you're trying to drive so you build this community of people
43:07
that support you and therefore you support them that's that's that's a really nice thing but yeah i mean i'm gonna say
43:14
it you know when it comes to the changes all the time isn't it michelle it's relentless
43:19
um well it has been since i've kind of joined it so yeah swatting up on a sunday about what
43:25
what might come in the budget of change again just because you have a good accountant remember no one looks after your
43:32
finances in your business as well as you do so yes they're there to advise but you
43:37
don't hand over accountability to them because you want to make sure that you know you make sure your money looks after
43:43
your business is in good hands thanks well um nelly i'll put this to you i actually don't know if you've
43:50
had this experience yourself um somebody's asked i recently returned from maternity leave i'm returning to my role in hr but in
43:57
respects it feels like i'm starting a new job how do you keep up to date with the latest trends and changes in the profession
44:03
well i have to agree that you know the profession is moving you know at such a high pace you
44:09
know the way we used to do hr one year two years or even three years ago is is
44:14
different than it is today so look i think um and this is let's say one of the
44:20
key takeaway from me having worked for so long in hr is how do you continue to
44:26
renew yourself how do you keep up with all the trends uh in the in the function
44:31
you know itself but also what's going on in the industry and how do you
44:36
keep yourself and your skills up to date so my my recommendation my my question is why
44:42
does it feel different than when you left and how long have you been gone how can you understand you know what's
44:49
the strategy and the direction and how can you uh you know integrate yourself back in
44:55
what i'm seeing is with the hr transformation even the definition of a role for
45:01
example of an hr business partner or of an hr advisor or even an hr operation
45:07
is is changing in nature because a lot of the tasks that used to be done
45:13
previously part of the role is now being taken care of by the technology so how how can you leverage
45:20
the skills you have and build up build on them but also acquire uh
45:25
new skills that can help you accelerate um you know your your development or your
45:31
growth back into the hr function thank you uh somebody's about to go on maternity leave very
45:37
useful we'll take that away put it in my back pocket um david i'm getting the sense from a
45:42
lot of the questions a lot of stuff on the chat and there's quite a lot of frustration around that people are feeling quite fed up they feel that they have been
45:48
working really hard searching for something they're not able to get a break what advice would you give either on
45:54
finding that break or on kind of remaining positive and resilient given the situation we find ourselves in
46:01
so first of all it depends on whether you see it as a good thing or a bad thing but there are lots of people in your position
46:06
so it's not unusual and um you're not doing anything wrong or
46:11
you're not missing out on something and it's just actually a tough market
46:17
and to an extent it's always been that way they'll normally be more qualified people in the profession than people wanting to do a job and something
46:23
like us um particularly in hr i think how you stand out
46:28
and making sure that you've got all of the things that are working in your favor in terms of i guess the percentage
46:33
chance of getting a job because it's a volume game at times and and how you go structuring kind of
46:38
your job hunt is really important i mean i i got a job at one point just off the world's most ridiculous cv i did
46:44
like a kind of fancy presentation thing and it caught someone's eye and i ended up getting a job through that but that wouldn't work for lots of
46:51
organizations the more you can tailor identify the organizational sector you want to work for
46:56
tailor an approach and a job approach for that get to know good recruiters and and it's
47:02
harder at the start of your career because you really are one of lots of cvs rather than a person but find a way to stand out
47:08
they're all viable but equally make use of the community in the networks i think that's
47:14
my best advice if you if you're gonna try and not be just one of a pile of 500 cvs but be the
47:20
cv that someone's looking out for then that takes um some different approaches so take all
47:26
the help you can get use the resources that the crpd provide in terms of that cv guidance and things
47:31
like that but keep hoping as well because almost everyone on this call will have had to have got that first
47:37
role at some point we've all been through that journey it does happen we've all had bits of our career where
47:44
you kind of go actually i feel like i'm two years behind where i want to be um but the people that keep going are
47:50
the ones that do get those results and do get that reward but it doesn't make it feel any better at the
47:55
time so i can empathize but i can't make that go away i wish you could wave a magic wand
48:01
unfortunately yeah this is the situation we find ourselves in um a few questions about getting
48:06
management experience so i think especially it's quite interesting within hr isn't it is you probably have to coach managers every day but you
48:12
might not have managed your own team any advice for first steps into management
48:18
roles um michelle any thoughts on that um i think if you're in the current role
48:23
it may be worth finding out if there's any opportunities that you can shadow somebody um
48:30
and i would say either shadowing someone who's already in management then you can just learn from them and find a mentor
48:39
who is in management and that's another way in because once you start working and getting exposure in this
48:47
field they see what skills you have as well and then it's then there's another conversation about
48:53
how do i get more uh how can i apply it to be a manager or to
48:58
to up skill so i would always say try and see if there's any like job enhancement
49:03
opportunities in your in your organization if you can be mentored by a manager that you trust um
49:10
and see if that works i think those are two options i can definitely suggest david yeah
49:18
there's some really basic stuff as well cover for people's holiday yeah just just be the one that people turn to to cover the team when the
49:24
manager's taking their annual leave and step up do project work and within that quite often you'll find
49:30
that you're managing people in a different way and and the other thing i just urge everyone because this is like my bet noise
49:36
throughout my entire career work out why you want to manage people because if it's for your career
49:41
then what you're doing is you're taking charge of a whole other group of people and how they feel about work
49:46
focused on you if you want to do it because you want to be a really good manager and a good leader of people then
49:51
you end up in a different place automatically but i managed people for about a month i was really proud because it felt like
49:58
a step up my boss took me to one side and went how does it feel to be in charge of seven people's mortgages and i was like wow um it really doesn't
50:06
matter the intent that you go into it so don't just do it as a stepping stone managing people is a really serious thing right it's about how they feel at
50:12
the end of every single day it's about how their career is going to develop it's not about you so take the opportunity to get it forge
50:19
them where you can put your hand up for it very clearly and but do it for the right reason david
50:25
is my line manager so so he uh yeah practices what he preaches kind of yeah
50:30
when it goes wrong it goes horribly wrong um nelly a question here about again i
50:36
think it's about showing how um how committed you are how ambitious some amy's asked if i entered
50:43
into a new role a big company would i be penalized for focusing my professional development plan
50:48
on progressing into an hr role but within that same company i think really it depends on the company
50:55
culture and how open they are really to promote talent across lines of
51:00
business and across the organization uh so it will be very difficult to answer that
51:06
question you know on a general level um but i think it's it's important
51:12
really to if the organization does not provide that opportunity going back to what david said at the
51:18
beginning is this the right organization for me or you know sometimes when you move
51:25
if you're open in your career you know you're you're just not fixated on one approach it's nice to have a goal in
51:31
mind but it's also nice to have the flexibility and be keep your eye open on the opportunities
51:36
that might come up and sometimes deviate from just a straight line um and uh some you know when you
51:45
venture on some of these small roads just to go back on the main road you might discover new avenues or new
51:53
opportunities that you didn't even think about uh before and i can and i'm saying that you know from my own experience when i
52:00
how i got into this advisory role was purely through the fact that a lot of time
52:06
people were coming to me from our colleagues saying you know what can you please connect with our customers
52:11
tell them how we have transformed hr at sap how we're doing you know uh learning management transformation
52:18
how are we doing you know i don't know one two three how are we before transforming our performance management
52:25
and i discovered that you know this is this is i quite enjoy that that
52:31
job and and it wasn't part of my path you know my path in my mind was like to grow and take on another
52:38
uh regional role or to go specifically into certain areas of hr but it uncovers new opportunities and
52:45
it's okay to take a small deviation um to grow or to accelerate uh growth in a
52:52
different direction thank you i think that phrase about it being a less of a career ladder and more of a jungle gym or
52:58
climbing frame kind of going all over the place and careers are very fluid at the moment so it's important to keep that
53:05
flexibility in mind thank you somebody's asked about the
53:10
value of reflection asha said i'm beginning to understand the value reflection has especially during my cipd studies how have you used
53:17
reflection in your life what advice do you have for implementing reflection as a regular practice how has it supported your your growth
53:23
and progression mel how do you use reflection in your work
53:32
she never reflects at all i do i do i try i'm trying on the question i'm
53:38
reflecting on the question i think um so for me i have to take time out between um
53:45
assignments so i i find it difficult to um jump from one to to the other
53:54
um spent a long time having to understand a culture of organization how
54:00
it works the dynamics um you you work in a
54:05
uh i just saw david's note about mel being live at reflecting thanks
54:13
you have to take time out sometimes to to be able to a reflect on what you've achieved um
54:21
what you would do differently and in the self-employed market that is really
54:27
valuable to do because it starts to really hone what you want to do
54:33
um in the future with your business how you link that with your future business plan
54:38
um so from a from a self-employed perspective between for me and i'm sure
54:44
michelle would add to that between clients and she does it a slightly different way but i'm sure she she does that in the same way i think on
54:51
the job uh reflection is is ensuring you cast your net why to let
54:58
others feedback to you so um some of the most uh
55:03
the greatest feedback i've got is not from a line manager it's from those around me so people who have
55:09
worked with me for me who i've connected with and sometimes they just give you those nuggets of gold
55:15
actually which if you can catch them and take time to digest them than that i found those really pivotable
55:24
pivotal um for the future uh of where i've gone on my career and
55:29
as nelly said i've taken some quite curvy tight rows of where i thought i was going to go
55:36
versus listening to some of those that feedback and being able to reflect on it
55:41
thank you michelle yeah and i really wanted to jump in on here because i do
55:46
reflection every sunday and i just look at and there's two things i ask myself
55:51
what went well and how can i improve and i do that because i want to
55:58
i want to make sure that i'm doing something right and then i want to know where i can improve to be better and i
56:04
always and i think part of the reflection is really sitting down and thinking what can i do better for next
56:10
week and i always say be in tune to how you're feeling about things if
56:16
something is sticking with you and it keeps coming back up reflect on that and think why is it happening what can i change about it
56:23
and the things that you're doing right i always say reward yourself because you want to have almost like a
56:30
visual representation of when you're doing things right and then you do more of it and you know they say what you appreciate
56:36
appreciates so i would definitely in anyone who's listening to this whatever you know whatever stage you are
56:42
in your hr career whatever you're doing right really hope you really hone into that and you do more of that
56:49
right and the things that you think yeah i can improve on don't see it as failure you just see it as feedback and that's where
56:56
that reflection and that journaling comes in really handy so i just wanted to give that piece of advice in in relation
57:02
to what mail was saying thanks that's a great advice i'm really sorry we've only got a couple of minutes left and
57:07
maybe it's going to overrun slightly anyway um because i really like to ask everybody at the end of one of these sessions just to offer
57:13
one piece of advice that you really want people to take away from the session so if they ignore everything else that
57:18
you said i'm sure they won't because it was all gold uh what one thing would you like them to kind of write down listen to
57:24
reflect on um from this session nelly can i start with you for your one
57:30
nugget of gold um keep keep learning that's nice nice and brief
57:38
david um yeah don't be afraid to ask for help genuinely do that and then help others
57:44
as you go through i'm sure everyone uh on the panel is going to have multiple linkedin requests after this and i'm sure they will
57:50
accept all of them and also message you privately let people know uh beyond your manager
57:58
if you're looking to do something different looking on their chats lots of people saying i want to get into this i want to do that
58:04
um i was always quite shocked as an hrd sometimes well i didn't even know that within the team so don't be afraid
58:11
to kind of jump over barriers that are there and let people know not just in your company
58:17
but on on social all these different networks because if you're keeping it to yourself or only
58:24
told one person the chances are you know there's a whole army of people out there that might be able to help you
58:30
so share tell people ask for help use the social it's amazing uh what it
58:37
can bring you thank you and last but not least michelle i would say don't be afraid to
58:42
show up to show up as you authentically and whatever platforms uh and don't be afraid to show up in
58:49
your workplace like everybody said if you want a new role you have to start acting like you
58:55
want that role to tell people that you want that role so be unafraid to show up and be
59:01
unafraid to ask thank you so much um really brilliant piece of advice to take away there
59:07
um i tried to ask as many questions as possible i'm really sorry if i didn't get to yours if it was incredibly specific then i might have tried to
59:12
group it into themes of other questions but hopefully everybody watching uh whether live or on demand you feel
59:18
like you've got something out of that i can see in the chat that people have been connecting giving each other advice
59:23
and support which is always really really fabulous to see i always think about these sessions that it really just shows how supportive
59:30
and open and sharing this profession is uh thank you so much to david nelly mel
59:36
and michelle for for taking part and for sharing their experiences really really honestly and uh with no filter i think as well
59:42
which is always really really helpful but that is it from us for this afternoon remember there is a session specifically on cipd qualifications
59:48
that's taking place on the 22nd of feb so do sign up for that if you've got any questions about various kind of levels
59:54
and options available to you but that is it from us for now have a really good afternoon and we will see you next time
1:00:07
goodbye
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