Personnel practitioners are involved with programs concerning the recruitment, selection, training, retention, compensation and safety of employees. Their objective is the most effective utilization of the company's human resource. Their objective is not simply to help people per se. The activities of personnel practitioners are listed below, in an approximate descending order of the amount of interpersonal contact in each activity.
Recruiting, Duties include advertising open positions, interviewing applicants, negotiating compensation offers, monitoring Equal Employment Opportunity compliance.
Training. Duties include designing and conducting programs to teach workers how to perform their duties, or to teach supervisors how to maintain the productivity of their subordinates.
Occupational Health and Safety. Duties include careful review of provisions of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Act), inspecting the workplace for compliance, or arranging for outside consultants to make the inspection, and writing detailed reports.
Labor Relations. Duties include negotiating contracts and resolving disputes between employers and employees. To enter this field, you usually need considerable experience in the other personnel activities, so there are not many entry-level positions.
Compensation Analyst. Duties include conducting detailed statistical studies of prevailing levels of wages and fringe benefits paid to various worker groups, and writing detailed reports on the findings.
Personnel practitioners may be generalists or specialists. Generalists are proficient in most or all of the areas of personnel activity. Specialists concentrate in one of the areas. Recent graduates usually begin in one of the less technical activities, such as recruiting. They then develop into generalists after two to three years and may become specialists in another five or so years. Experienced personnel practitioners may supervise the work of subordinates, and advise top decision makers in a business about human resources legislation and policies. While the ability to work well with people is important, other skills, such as the ability to communicate effectively, are equally important.
Advertising
Advertising and public relations are fields that tend to have a reputation for creativity and variety. As a result, there are always many applicants for whatever opportunities are available. These opportunities tend to be more numerous in the cities of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where most of the major advertising firms are headquartered.
Advertising is used to motivate customers to buy products. Common jobs in advertising include:
Copy Writer Writing the words, or copy, which appear in ads and sales newsletters. Copy writers may write scripts for advertisements for television or radio.
Layout Artist Combining copy with visual artwork to create a pleasing, attention-grabbing arrangement.
Account Executive Account executives consult with marketing re searchers to study the client's sales, public relations and advertising problems and goals. From these variables advertising campaign strategies are planned. Account executives then coordinate the activities of copywriters and layout artists to create advertising to meet their customer's demands.
Copy writers, layout artists or advertising sales representatives can progress to this position. Account executives can be promoted to handle larger and more complex accounts, or they may eventually open their own agencies.
Successful applicants for positions in advertising usually have talent in writing, commercial art, and/or selling. They tend to thrive in a highly varied, creative, competitive, pressure-filled environment.
Public Relations
Public relations, like advertising, is generally known as a "glamor field." Many applicants compete for relatively few job openings. Public relations practitioners promote good will, develop credibility, and create a favorable public image for their employers. They extol the benefits of their employer's product or service to various publics, such as: the media, customers, stockholders, regulatory agencies, as well as the general public. Public relations practitioners may specialize in governmental affairs or lobbying with public officials. Work in public relations involves a great deal of writing. They write press releases, magazine articles, and speeches. They must also be adept public speakers themselves.
One way to enter the field of public relations is through reporting for small local newspapers, called "shoppers," then possibly working for a large company on the "in-house" public relations staff. An experienced individual may manage an in-house public relations group or move to an outside public relations agency that works with many companies. After many years of experience and a sizable clientele, an individual could do consulting or open his or her own firm.
Operations
Employees in operations supervise and coordinate the activities of other workers, often clerical, to keep the day-to-day activities of a business going. Operations supervisors study production schedules and estimate worker-hour requirements for completion of assignments. They analyze and resolve work problems, and motivate and/or discipline subordinates.
For example, operations managers in banks supervise tellers and clerks in their daily activities. In a public utility, a customer service manager supervises workers who resolve customer complaints. Employers either hire recent graduates as operations supervisors directly, or "bring them through the ranks" of clerical or paraprofessional workers. Operations managers need to be able to identify the causes of work problems, be objective enough to divorce personalities from other potential causes of problems, and be tactful enough to correct the performance of subordinates.
Most of the discussion in this book has been aimed at locating a full-time position in an organization. There are other viable alternatives that graduates select every year that are not so traditional in nature. Here are two important ones that you too might want to consider:
Working for Yourself
Many individuals have a dream of working for themselves in a business they have created. Many people plan such opportunities for retirement, but some start building such an opportunity as soon as they graduate. The advantages of working for yourself are clear to most people: independence, flexibility, control are some of the most commonly cited attractions in being your own boss.
To increase the chances of success, many individuals go into business with others. For example, someone who recently graduated from college might team together with a professional who is already successful in the field. By doing this, you gain the advantage of someone who is experienced in the field and who has an extensive network of contacts.
Likewise, joining with other students who share common interests can help to minimize your total costs while at the same time sharing experiences, resources, and business contacts that are made.
Work Time Options
Permanent part-time employment is work that is less than full-time but has a career orientation and prospects for upward mobility. Job sharing is when two people share the responsibilities of one full-time position with salary and fringe benefits prorated.
These options are pursued by people who for a variety of reasons may want to work at one job less than the full-time standard of 40 hours per week. It has special advantages for those who may be attending graduate or professional school or raising small children. From the employer's point of view, the main advantage of job sharing appears to be that two people can bring to a job different talents, different perspectives, and make the job even stronger. More information on work time options can be requested from New Ways to Work, a non-profit work resource and research organization based in San Francisco.