Introduction

Over the last few years, remote working models have become quite normal, and workplace safety and employee engagement have been pushed into the spotlight. Although the last several years have been challenging for the domain of HR, however, HR today has evolved massively. This revolution has opened numerous opportunities for HR professionals and HR personnel.

Even though it is highly crucial for HR Professionals to expand their career horizon, but their day-to-day responsibilities make it hard to focus on their careers. Between navigating an ever-changing compliance landscape and staying current with industry developments, investing in your own career might seem like a stretch, which should not be the case!

How To Grow Your HR Career

With HR functions expanding with time, and businesses recognizing HR’s value, now is the perfect time for HR professionals to work out exactly what they want to do and how they want to accelerate their careers. Here are some key steps that will help you climb your ladder of success:

Define Your Long-Term Career Goals

The first step to excelling in any career is to work on your long-term career goals. Once you know exactly what you need to achieve in the future, you can map out your short-term career objectives which will help you decide what you need to do to get there. There are several key questions that you need to answer in order to set clear objectives. Those questions could be:

• What do you find most fulfilling about your current role?
• What do you dislike about your current role?
• Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
• What type of organization do you want to work for?
• How much responsibility do you want to take on? Do you want to make a lateral move, or get a promotion?
• Are there any key gaps that you need to work on?

The questions are not subjected to be limited to this, if these do not match with your goals, you can even remove a fewquestions from the list, and can even add new questions. The main purpose of identifying career goals is to have a clear idea of where you want to direct yourself.

Stay Ahead of the Curve

Today’s world is extremely dynamic, every day something new and unique is being introduced. We never even imagined that technology would become so popular and so common amongst people, yet, here we are, where everything works on just a single touch of our smartphones.

With the world constantly evolving, the trends and practices in HR are also evolving with it. To achieve your career goals, you have to be fully up-to-date with modern industry trends and practices. Traditional employee management strategies and methods have become too outdated to manage today’s generation. With Generation Z entering the workforce, HR professionals have to use several different techniques to satisfy and retain the individuals of this generation. Gen-Zs are surely the most difficult generation to deal with, and you need to stay updated with every latest trend to satisfy the employees of this generation.

Moreover, the real question is how to stay updated with the latest trends and practices. Well, we all are aware of the magic of the internet, there is almost nothing that you cannot find on it these days. Instead of using the internet as a time-killer, you could actually use it for career development.

There are several websites on the internet that offer online certified HR courses. No matter where you are in the world, you can earn a certification with the comfort of your couch at the most affordable rates. The best part of these online HR certifications is that everything is done online, the registration, the learning, the examination, the credential, etc. There are many websites you can find online that offer certified courses with certification, but the most popular ones are HRAcademia, HRCI, SHRM, CIPD, AIHR, and so on.

Find a Mentor

No matter where you are in your professional career, everyone can benefit from having a mentor by their side.Having someone with almost the same experiences and skills can guide you professionally and help you reach your full potential.

We tend to work our best when we are trying to follow someone. When you have a mentor, you follow someone else’s footsteps and therefore have a clear idea beforehand of what you are trying to achieve and what difficulties you will face while achieving them.

Some organizations even offer internal mentoring schemes, so make sure that is it available to you or not. If not, then set one up for yourself! Find someone in the organization who you think would make a great mentor and ask if you can set up frequentcatch-ups with them. You should also consider shadowing members of your own (or even external) teams to gain exposure to different roles.

Working on Relevant HR Skills

To excel in your career, it is very important to know your strengths and weaknesses. If you have gaps in your skillset, then you need to figure out ways you could overcome those weaknesses. Everyone has some flaws, but if you work on your flaws, you ultimately enlarge your comfort zone, which will automatically open numerous opportunities for you. Some of the most demanded skills in HR are:

• Talent acquisition
• Change management
• HR systems implementation
• Organizational effectiveness
• Performance optimization
• Diversity and inclusion
• Corporate social responsibility

Working on your skills will not only help you perform multiple tasks simultaneously, but it will also give you an edge over other candidates when you apply for a position.

Wrapping Up

Every HR professional follows a unique path, and sometimes it might even feel like a lonely road, but at every stage of the journey you will find a wealth of networks and resources awaiting you!