Nowadays, each company in order to be competitive needs to have thoroughly selected, professional employees, and HR service is performing this task. The Day of Personnel Management Specialist, or HR manager, is celebrated by all personnel office specialists on the third Wednesday of September. This popular in present days profession is quite prestigious and in-demand. If previously personnel officers used to perform exceptionally routine work of execution and documentation of staff records, now the range of a HR manager’s responsibilities is much wider. As of today, each vacancy of HR manager includes a list of requirements and responsibilities from searching for applicants who are to become full-time workers till determining personnel policy of a firm and forming corporate culture in general. Irina Rezanovich, Head of the Department of Labor Economy and Human Resources Management and lecturers of the Department Valeriya Konkina and Maria Gnedkova told us about specificity of the profession and zbout the experience that students get at the Department.
– What is the specificity of HR specialist profession? What should such specialist know and be able to do?
Irina Rezanovich: – In our organizations, HR manager is a proxy of leadership ideas to executors and vice versa. You need to be able to walk on edge, be versatile and rational. As of today, an HR manager welcomes an employee who comes to an enterprise, reads his résumé, analyzes, estimates his value for the enterprise, and only then allow him to meet the leadership for an interview. Afterwards, it is also him who supervises adaptation, includes the new employee in a system of motivation, education, vocational training, etc.
Today, practically any large enough enterprise has divisions or services for human resources management, and managers are already specializing in areas which are important for the enterprise. They should be unique, because they need to talk to managers in the language of economy, to low-level and mid-level executives – in the language of management and control; they need to know psychology, because they have to deal with people’s problems and find ways for their solutions. They should know pedagogy, because HR managers have to train and develop employees. This range is quite wide; therefore I can say that studying this specialization is not easy, but interesting.
– How has the profession changed in time?
– During the Soviet period our profession was cumulated in two capacious words: “personnel officer”, and all the questions connected with people, with psychology for influencing them, with motivation and encouragement for labor – everything was performed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In early 90s, in relation with establishment of the new market structure of economy, it turned out that in fact there were no employees at enterprises to deal with people’s problems; there was no such common denominator between the employer and employees. That’s why the necessity to widen the range of functions of a HR manager, create new subdivisions and services for human resources management, of HR management, borrowing the experience of foreign companies, arose. HR management includeseverything that is connected to people. The profession of human resources manager exists in Russia since 2001.
– What do students learn at the Department? What does their practical training include?
Valeriya Konkina: – Educational process is constructed based on balance. Lectures are mainly targeted at mastering basic knowledge in the fileds of psychology, pedagogy, management, economy, sociology. Practical training are based on searching the solutions of real practical situations, so that graduates during their internship could prove themselves. If we are to talk about venues for internship, they are usually personnel subdivisions of enterprises in the sphere of industrial, trade, transport, banking, educational, and other spheres of activity.
Irina Rezanovich: – We collaborate with past years graduates and with enterprises in which they are working. Wide range of venues for internship allows for students to get recruited in organizations where they long since wished to work.
Maria Gnedkova: – Those who proved themselves during internship get job offers during their senior years at the university. It is often that requests from enterprises for recruitment of successful graduates come to our Department.
– Where do graduates work? Are they in demand?
Irina Rezanovich: – The demand of responsible students is very high. Those who studied well are all employed. Our graduates are mainly working in the Chelyabinsk region, but there are those who are working abroad, and some move to Saint Petersburg, Sochi or Moscow.