Victorio Milian: Functional HR ? My Strategy

Functional HR ? My Strategy

Often, when I'm talking about my choice to go into Human Resources after graduating with my MBA, I'm talking to HR folks. This lends to a lot of gushing about the function ? that I love the opportunity to solve people problems every day. I?m excited to be going into functional HR: working in generalist and/or specialist roles within a company?s HR department.

Don't get me wrong; all of this is true. But I'm also going into HR for strategic reasons ? I feel that by going into functional HR I can accelerate my career opportunities going forward for the following reasons.

1. My peers aren't pursuing it, so there is a lack of competition?From my business school class of 900, I'm the only person I know of pursuing functional HR after graduation. This meant that whenever I submitted a resume or spoke to alums in the function, I was the only one doing so. It is really easy to be at the top of the pile when you're the only submission!
2. Exposure to the top of the organization.When you work in strategic HR, guess what? You get to talk to the people who set firm strategy. To borrow a military analogy: staff sergeants advise line generals. In my 10 week summer internship at a big bank, I usually met with managing directors, not my Associate peers ?in the business.? PLUS because many HR departments are ?lean? you may get more responsibility early, particularly if you demonstrate an ability to treat your business lines as clients. At said internship, I was given more autonomy than I expected, partially because my supervisors were stretched thin.
3. Transferability of skills. I'm super excited about my job post graduation and can see myself in Human Resources and at that specific organization for a long time. But as someone who is risk averse (and more than a little commitment-phobic), I was nervous that I would be painting myself into a corner by opting into HR. I wondered, was I closing off working in a revenue generating role? Was I committing to an industry?

What I found is that there is a lot of mobility within and outside of Human Resources. From mentors and peers, I've seen that HR is somewhat industry neutral. Though you should like ? and definitely understand ? the industry your company is in, many of the issues on the HR side are common across financial services, technology firms, pharmaceuticals, and consumer package goods. This holds even more true for entry level positions, so pick out what sounds good to you now, knowing you can always refine later.

Beyond industry neutrality, HR professionals ? especially generalists ? can also move to revenue generating side of the business. At least three of my mentors have bounced from HR roles to ?the line,? often in high level administrative positions, effectively the business unit leader?s second-in-command. As an HR generalist, you're responsible for understanding company direction and strategy, which is critical to many ?front office? roles.

Finally, from my days in public accounting I know how satisfying it can be to objectively quantify your contribution to your firm?s revenues ? I knew how much clients were charged for my services per hour and I could track the number of hours I spent on each project. If this type of satisfaction is important to you, functional HR can be hard. We support business units and help them run more efficiently or effectively but we don?t bring in dollars ourselves. Luckily, HR and Human Capital Management consulting is a huge field: from the giant Deloitte, Mercer and Booz & Co?s of the world, to independent HR professionals hanging out their own shingle.

With all this in mind, I'm graduating May 24th full of excitement for my career as an HR professional to begin!


Clare Hawthorne is an (almost!) graduate of the Harvard Business School, excited to add to her 10 weeks of HR experience. Before she had her HR awakening, she spent 3 years at a Big 4 firm in public accounting and still maintains her CPA. Follow her on Twitter @cbhawthorne, check out clarehawthorne.com, or email her at info@clarehawthorne.com.

white house correspondents dinner phoenix coyotes bruce irvin charlie st cloud celtics josh hamilton nba playoffs