Musings of an Engineer-turned-HR: Here’s what the budding HRs should know

It was on a not-so-fine day that Arjun, CEO of Profoundis and my collegemate met me at Lulu Mall in Kochi. I was going back to Bangalore, where I worked at Oracle as a Software Engineer for around 3 years then, and I had no clue what Arjun had to offer. He asked me if […]

It was on a not-so-fine day that Arjun, CEO of Profoundis and my collegemate met me at Lulu Mall in Kochi. I was going back to Bangalore, where I worked at Oracle as a Software Engineer for around 3 years then, and I had no clue what Arjun had to offer. He asked me if I would like to join as the Head of HR of Profoundis, which was about to be acquired by FullContact, Inc.

I personally believed that I had the traits of an HR (though when I look back now, most of those thoughts were out of place ;-)). I had a dilemma during the final year of study of my graduation whether I should pursue MBA or MTech. After a lot of articulation and inner discourse I decided to pursue MTech, which I do NOT regret now. I ended up in IT, as I assumed, but I never felt Software Engineering was my realm. Having these excruciating thoughts to jump out of my engineer role coupled with Arjun’s offer, I didn’t have a second thought. I had my personal reasons to move to Kochi, too.

If I do not say that I was apprehensive, rather confused, about my capacity to be a Head of HR at the very beginning of my HR career itself, I wouldn’t be doing justice to me. I did a lot of reading afterwards, which in fact Arjun asked me not to. He said they wanted an unconventional HR, who doesn’t go by the books, and recommended that I be not distracted and misinformed by the literature. However, I did my fair share of reading before I joined Profoundis.

What followed was a roller-coaster ride. As I write this, I can feel the cold feet I’d when I first entered the Profoundis office. But I’d something in store – an amazing team who believed that people operations is fundamental and pivotal to any business. There started this small journey of my HR career, which is now at the fourth year! The three years have been of immense learning, understanding, mistakes, corrections, unlearning and what not! I would like to scribble down for the budding HR fellows, who might have as bad a cold feet as I’d on my first day, as to what to expect, what to ignore, what to render on an HR job. Here we go:

Contents

  • Prepare to Unlearn and Re-learn
  • HR is not just about compliance
  • Culture is your dad, business is your mom
  • Find your path to heaven
  • Learning is the Key
  • Learn from marketers
  • Not every grey hair deserves your ears
  • Do not forget to live
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Prepare to Unlearn and Re-learn

One might have learnt many things about HR and processes in their text book; or they might have been told that this is how the ideal HR function looks like. Be ready to face the fact that HR is different across organisations depending on the nature of business, nature of the workforce, locale and the priorities of the leadership. What you learnt in books could be obsolete by when you join the HR job – so be ready to remember/forget what you learnt and start afresh on many things—let’s preserve and remember what’s still required. Be ready to read and re-read the latest books, trends, researches, blogs, etc. so that you stay up-to-date.

HR is not just about compliance

The general notion that many have is that HR is all about recruitment and compliance – this is a myth. HR has over the last two decades evolved as a business function. While compliance plays an important role in the success of an HR team, treating them as the core function of HR is erroneous. Compliance is an assumed-to-be-required function of HR. It’s very basic. HR’s more to it. But remember—compliance is a culture. Nurture it, but that’s not only what you’re defined by.

Culture is your dad, business is your mom

It’s the business leadership and the HR leadership together that decide the fate of an organisation. If one of this duo fails, either you will end up with a zero or negative business growth or a bunch of unsatisfactory people. The two are complementary to each other—or, rather, co-existent. HRs (should get a chance to) decide the culture of an organisation, while they participate in deciding the business destiny. Gone are those days when HRs come into play when someone needs to be hired, reprimanded or fired. Starting from talent acquisition to talent development to talent retention to talent nurturing to making the workplace a great experience for your members depend on how the HR team is envisaged and functions. Your job exists because the business exists

Find your path to heaven

One may define the success of their career by multi-factors. For some, it could be the happiness of their members, achieving KRIs, promotions and merit increases, and what not! But ultimately, if you ask me, the end result of one’s actions should be such that it makes him/her happy.

Learning is the Key

You need to invest some time to learn. To learn from others, your peers, leaders, fellow HRs, blogs, and what not! Make sure you are part of the communities of your liking. I have learnt a lot from the fellow HRs through NIPM, WhatsApp groups, meetups at Infopark, conferences, etc. Whenever you’re part of such a gathering, make sure you find (rather than it giving you; thanks to Anish for the usage) some takeaway as learning. You may also follow some really good HR blogs like PeopleMatters, RBL, etc.

Learn from marketers

It’s high time HR team learnt from the Marketing teams on various fronts. Starting from employer branding, HR should look at how the marketing team hustles in getting the product into the market and reach the right targets. In my opinion, Marketing teams are the ones who first use all the theories and tools of human interactions, technology, and result-oriented-action-plans in any organisation. They are leaders in many respect – for example, take the case of Conjoint analysis which helps the product organisations decide how their product should be. HRs can very well adopt this (and many organisations have already done so) technique to define the happiness factors of their members—the benefits, the facilities, the factors by which they will leave the organisation, etc. One must look at how the marketing team performs in their organisation and imbibe what can be imbibed into their HR team—be it theories of human interaction or defining success of one’s function.

Not every grey hair deserves your ears

Keep the thought that every grey-haired man is a mentor out of your minds; it’s the grey matter that matters. You might need a mentor who can lead you through your HR career—since you’re just taking your baby steps—but that doesn’t mean that you should lend ears and years to those who pretend to be mentors. Try a few, leave them it doesn’t work. But trust me, having a good mentor is always worth the effort—but the call is yours.

Do not forget to live

When you strive to have a great work-life balance for your members, do not forget to have a life for yourself. Chill, keep calm and just be yourself. Have an introspection of whether you hate Mondays, or super happy on Fridays—if the answer is a yes, you should consider switching the job. At the end of your life, what matters is whether you have been happy throughout and that happiness is defined by you and you alone.

Also published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/musings-engineer-turned-hr-heres-what-budding-hrs-t-a-shrm-cp/?published=t

Content retrieved from: https://peoplefirst.in/musings-of-an-engineer-turned-hr-heres-what-the-budding-hrs-should-know/.

Dear Indians, stop saying this to youngsters!

Interesting incident happened today. I was at the church, at the end of the normal Sunday service with a lot of people gathered in small groups all around the premises greeting and talking with each other.

Churches and the Sunday gatherings are very important in ones social life. That’s when you meet your childhood friends, share the news and stories and the happiness. All in the 10 minutes after church.

But this was my first time to this particular church and I had hardly anyone whom I knew around me. While waiting for my wife to come out of the church, I just got too curious to eavesdrop into the conversation two young gentlemen were having just beside me.

One, near 25 years of age, neatly dressed, very evidently in the early stages of a successful career. Other, 18-ish, in his polo tees, is the confused teenager.

Elder: So, what plans next?

Younger: Not made up my mind, but thinking of going for ‘degree’ (the vernacular for under grad courses other than Engineering and Medical)

Elder: Oh… (definitely not impressed!) So… which course?

Younger: Thinking of B-Com or Humanities

Elder: At least choose B-Com. Humanities have ‘zero-scope’ (again another vernacular, meaning job opportunities)

Younger: Yeah, everyone is telling me this. So B-Com would be better, right brother?

Elder: Yeah, any day!

I know what you might be thinking. You might have heard similar conversations a hundred times, if not more and many a times, might have been one of the two in the conversation. But this time, it got me thinking.

  • Is it the right thing to say to a young boy who is trying to decide where he wants to go next?
  • Why are we so obsessed with the word ‘scope’?
  • What’s the best way of advising someone at that stage?
  1. NO. Talking about ‘scope’ of a course is not the right thing to tell someone who is trying to choose a line of study that might live with him for his lifetime.

Why are we obsessed about the ‘scope’?

We live in a country where the employment rates are not ideal, the society is wired to think about education as just a means to get a job. And they cannot be blamed for thinking about the most easy paths towards a job, any job, as the education with the best ‘scope’.

This forced the trend-wave of ITIs and ITCs (skill training institutes) 30 years back because they had huge ‘scope’ in the middle east.

This forced thousands of youngsters from my home state kerala choose nursing as their career a few years back, though many of them had zero interest in it.

This forces us to think that Engineering and Medical education are the only good education systems because they get you a job sooner than the others.

Was it completely wrong to be obsessed about ‘scope’? NO.

Because, in many ways, this has led our society forward and helped millions of our people be financially stable.

But is it wrong to be obsessed about scope still? YES.

Because, the world around us is not the same anymore.Gone are the days where job was a hard-to-grab thing. It is easier to get jobs. But the jobs themselves have changed.

Jobs are no more a commodity. Jobs these days, demand more than just ‘skills’ and ‘education’. Jobs these days, demand creativity, aptitude, enthusiasm, and most importantly the love for the job. Computers are getting better skilled than us in commodity jobs. Jobs of the future will demand more and more creativity from the humans, and only the love for the job can get one to be creative at the job.

Going into something that you do not love, just for the ‘scope’ would make you join the league of thousands of nurses (by education)doing the accounting jobs (the most basic ones) and thousands of engineers doing everything under the planet other than building stuff.

What is the right advice you can give someone at his/her late teen-ages?

I would do it this way. I would ask them this question:

“Think of this hypothetical situation. All the jobs in this world — a teacher, a software engineer, a cricket player or a singer — every single job has the same salary, the same job security, the same work environments. Which would you choose?”

I would give them days to think about this and encourage them to go ask everyone around for advice, not about which to choose, but about how each work is. I would encourage them to think. And their answer will be the way forward for them.

Because when money, job security and everything similar are out of the equation, you would choose what you LOVE the most. And that LOVE is what will create the ‘SCOPE’ for you.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” – Confucius

What is in it for the HR professional in me?

The HR professional is probably one of the most affected by this healthy practice of people going after ‘scope’. We get people, aplenty of them. But we get very few who do things out of the interest. We get tons of people attending our interviews, but all of them ‘job seekers’. They are stuck in the suit that does not fit them, nor do they like wearing that suit. Each moment they sit inside our walls doing the job that we give them, they curse the choice they made and they curse the job. They do not love the job! That will be the root cause for low employee morale, high attrition, constant complaints, lack of belonging, low productivity, lack of innovation and all other issues you are fighting with in your HR job.

Here are a few things you could do as an HR professional.

  1. Measure the interest at interviews. We are running into a time where along with the skills and cultural fitness, we will need to measure interest as well. Armed forces offices interviews have traditionally employed a lot of psychometric analysis to gauge the interest that a person has towards the job. It is high time we start employing them too.
  2. Allow your people to cherish their interests AT work. Make sure your engagement activities are centred around interests of people. Identify what is the ‘other’ thing that the members of your team are interested in, make sure you give them all recognition and opportunities to do those AT work. They will start lovin the workplace.
  3. Talk about this. being HR professionals, you will be heard as the voice of the industry and job market by people in your circles. Be vocal about how interest, creativity and enthusiasm would drive the workforce of the future and not the choice by ‘scope’.

Jofin Joseph

Head of India Operations, FullContact

His Linkedin profile is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jofin/ 

This article was first published by NIPM Kerala chapter our 2017-18 Annual Issue of ‘Kerala Personnel’ magazine.