A Diverse Look Into HR: More Than Recruitment And Payroll

As an HR employee with 9 years of experience, Ngoc Nhi (30 years old, HCMC) shared that she enjoyed her job and wholeheartedly devoted herself to pursuing the HR major in the early years. Nhi strived towards the ambition to interact and connect with people while constantly learning new skills. However, 30 is a turning point that triggers her concern. “From time to time, when I think about my job, I feel uncertain about my future career path. I can not tell if I can make any breakthrough, nor can I challenge myself in another profession as starting everything from scratch is my deep-seated fear…” – Nhi said.

HR is an indispensable major with high demand in the labor market

However, Ms. Tieu Yen Trinh, CEO of Talentnet – the leading HR consulting firm in Vietnam, sees the opposite view. She stated that “There is a common misperception that the HR career lacks growth opportunities as the job is only limited to payroll, tax, and paid leave calculations. This notion is completely out-of-date in light of the pandemic and uncertain times. The role of the HR department in the business’s common strategy has been highlighted, requiring seamless coordination of HR with other departments to steer the organization through the workforce challenges. As a result, HR employees have plenty of opportunities to hone important new skills. Therefore, HR staff need to rethink their own goals and figure out what’s holding them back and what they can do to move forward in their careers“.

Instead of starting over, HR staff may break into the new field from the perspective of other majors. By doing this, they better understand their current positions and the strengths they can cultivate to advance their careers to the next level.

1. Deeply associated with Marketing, HR masters employer branding

Suppose the marketing department is responsible for spreading the word about the company’s products and services. In that case, the HR department takes part in creating and disseminating corporate culture images to employees and candidates, thereby increasing employee engagement with the business. No longer being restricted by tedious paperwork and policies, building a recruitment brand stems from the fact that HR must clearly define the employee’s career journey. This facilitates touch-point identification with different messages and particular benefits at each stage to fully involve employees in the organization on the entire journey before, during, and after leaving the business. Moreover, the HR team always strives to “think outside the box” as their Marketing counterparts. Indeed, one of HR’s significant roles is to develop new strategies and initiatives, thus promoting the business image in the labor market, enhancing competitive advantages, retaining talents, and reducing recruitment expenses. For example, Apple unexpectedly announced a stock bonus ranging from $50,000 to $180,000 for high-performance employees, which was an unprecedented reward to retain talents and protect their staff from being attracted by other rival businesses in Silicon Valley. These innovative and unexpected campaigns have played a significant role in building the company’s reputation, showing its attention and efforts to meet employees’ expectations.

2. As architects, HR establishes solid workforce structure

Given the context of entering the new era where values are constantly changing, most organizations move away from their traditional image and construct those in accordance with their existence and transformation towards sustainable development. This has become one of the most complex and strenuous challenges that require HR staff to fully expose their talent in designing company structures and reveal the hidden architect in themselves. The fundamental steps of a company’s foundation, from organizational restructuring to redefining HR processes, bear the design imprints of the HR architects. With a clear overview of the company’s performance and development needs, they are able to build the most solid, lean, and optimal foundation for the company. Afterwards, it is HR’s responsibility to work out a clear and coherent body structure that supports the company’s business purposes, in which employees fully understand all the titles and responsibilities and their future career paths. Furthermore, a clear work structure paves the way for upskilling or reskilling programs to enhance employee quality, foster productivity, and improve overall business performance. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that HR professionals have the vision and ability to design as actual architects.

3. Speaking fluently and flexibly as sales experts, HR exceeds KPIs

The primary function of HR can regard as talent attraction, selection, and recommendation for their organization. As the supervisor of the company culture’s development and maintenance, HR executives understand which candidates are the best fit for the company and, at the same time, build the right talent pool to fill the vacancies when necessary.

Regarding recruitment staff in the HR department, it is crucial to understand the two-way desires of both the company and candidates and possess strong communication skills. Similar to target customer attraction, HR needs to grasp candidates’ requirements to entice them, such as competitive benefits, a friendly working environment, or career prospects in the industry. Each candidate recruited by the HR department will play a part in contributing to business progress towards achieving its medium and long-term business goals. It can be seen that instead of selling products with all their hearts as sales staff, HR employees devote themselves full-time to communicating flexibly and enthusiastically, hence attracting outstanding candidates for the corporate.

HR who wants to “close” candidates also need knowledge, interpersonal skills, and mutual understanding

HR professionals are not limited to the 3 aforementioned models, but more important is their flexible transformation to fulfil all the diverse needs of businesses and employees. An HR pro can be depicted as creative and outgoing as a marketer, observant and disciplined as an architect, and flexible and proactive as a sales professional. In your opinion, what traits of other professions interconnect with HR specialists? Share your thoughts with Talentnet now!