If you walk into a large corporation's human resources (HR) department, you will find a number of professionals working in several different capacities. Among them will be someone on payroll, another will be a benefits director, a third handles safety and health issues and there are also recruiters. Still, the largest percentage will more than likely be devoted to, for lack of a better term, employee relations.
Employee relations have a number of different responsibilities tasked to them. They can be doing anything from handling unhappy workers and labor negotiations, recruitment and many other arenas; yet, they all have one thing in common. More than likely these HR professionals have taken their share of courses in psychology, if not gone out and actually gotten degrees in the behavioral sciences.
By definition, psychology is the ultimate human behavioral science. Businesses have deployed psychologists as part of their personnel as far back as Henry Ford, when he was trying to get the maximum out of his assembly lines. It didn't take Ford or many of his colleagues long to realize that it would be much more cost effective to keep a few of these pro's on staff than constantly having to bring in freelancers whenever he wanted to keep the company running smoothly.
Overall, HR professionals are white collar, nine-to-fivers who have their own private offices. This doesn't mean they don't do their share of overtime, particularly if they work in such arenas as labor negotiations or recruitment. Overall though, it's a great job if you generally like people and have good listening and communications skills.
A high school student who is interested in this profession should have a relatively well-rounded education, particularly in the liberal arts and social sciences. There are a number of excellent state, community and online colleges that offer degrees in Human Relations and Psychology. While employment can start with as little as a bachelor's degree, many HR personnel usually continue their education and go on for their master's degree.
Admittedly, working in human resources has gone through some tough times recently. You would be hard pressed to find any personnel in human resources who enjoyed working during the last recession, where they had to lay off a number of their fellow employees and even colleagues. At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes there were 900,000 HR professionals in the U.S. as of 2008. It estimates the numbers will swell to 1.1 million by 2018.
There is a lot of room when it comes to salary, dependent on years of experience, education and place of employment. The Bureau reports salaries range from $42,000 to $67,000. It can get much, much higher and with some foresight and hard work it can lead to a senior executive position. Don't stop reading here, there is much more to be learned about free college money.
Employee relations have a number of different responsibilities tasked to them. They can be doing anything from handling unhappy workers and labor negotiations, recruitment and many other arenas; yet, they all have one thing in common. More than likely these HR professionals have taken their share of courses in psychology, if not gone out and actually gotten degrees in the behavioral sciences.
By definition, psychology is the ultimate human behavioral science. Businesses have deployed psychologists as part of their personnel as far back as Henry Ford, when he was trying to get the maximum out of his assembly lines. It didn't take Ford or many of his colleagues long to realize that it would be much more cost effective to keep a few of these pro's on staff than constantly having to bring in freelancers whenever he wanted to keep the company running smoothly.
Overall, HR professionals are white collar, nine-to-fivers who have their own private offices. This doesn't mean they don't do their share of overtime, particularly if they work in such arenas as labor negotiations or recruitment. Overall though, it's a great job if you generally like people and have good listening and communications skills.
A high school student who is interested in this profession should have a relatively well-rounded education, particularly in the liberal arts and social sciences. There are a number of excellent state, community and online colleges that offer degrees in Human Relations and Psychology. While employment can start with as little as a bachelor's degree, many HR personnel usually continue their education and go on for their master's degree.
Admittedly, working in human resources has gone through some tough times recently. You would be hard pressed to find any personnel in human resources who enjoyed working during the last recession, where they had to lay off a number of their fellow employees and even colleagues. At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes there were 900,000 HR professionals in the U.S. as of 2008. It estimates the numbers will swell to 1.1 million by 2018.
There is a lot of room when it comes to salary, dependent on years of experience, education and place of employment. The Bureau reports salaries range from $42,000 to $67,000. It can get much, much higher and with some foresight and hard work it can lead to a senior executive position. Don't stop reading here, there is much more to be learned about free college money.
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Yet, as said before, human resources is an interdisciplinary field that involves knowing something in a lot of different arenas. It's a discipline that provides a number of tools no HR pro should be without. With Test Drive College Online, you can start with a psychology degree course!
