CAREER GUIDANCE : TEN Career opportunities for HRM graduates

A bachelor’s degree in Human Resources Management is highly sought after by today’s school leavers. There are many who prefer to take up HRM as their undergraduate study option. Even though the degree is popular, there seems to be some concern among the undergraduates about career opportunities available for HR specialists upon graduation. 

The biggest concern seems to be; “Can the Sri Lankan corporate sector productively absorb so many HR graduates?”

This seems to be a valid question as HR departments are typically smaller than (number of employees) compared with departments like marketing, finance, production etc. The problem is that most HR graduates as well are HR undergraduates assume that their ultimate career goal is to be a HR manager or a Personnel Manager.

However, if you so some research, you would find, that HRM graduates have a wider range of options in choosing a career.

Here are TEN career options for a HRM Graduate;

1] Fast-track management trainee programmes: 

Many blue-chip companies (large PLCs listed in the stock market) recruit HR graduates into their management trainee programmes to be trained as future managers. These programmes are a wonderful opportunity for fresh HR graduates to obtain vital training and gain an opportunity to join the management cadre. Corporates such a John Keells, Aitken Spence, Hayley’s, Richard Peiris, Nestle, Unilever, Dimo, Hemas, Brandix and MAS have such fast track management trainee programmes with annual intakes.

2] Banking (Operations/Back Office Careers): 

For most people, banking happens at a bank branch, and HR graduates who many not have the aptitude or the interest in finance/accounting do not consider banking as a career. However, there is a lot more in banking than savings accounts, current accounts, loans and leasing.

Banking is a highly labour intensive and highly a competitive industry. Banks need HR executives to recruit, train and carefully allocate staff to hundreds of branches island-wide. HR department must handle numerous training programmes that needs to be designed and implemented, there are performance appraisals to be conducted on all employees of the bank once a year, there would be regular transfers, promotions, salary revisions and grievances that needs to be handled. All these activities in a modern bank requires HR specialists.

Therefore, HR graduates should seriously consider banking as a career option.

3] Office administration & General Management: 

Apart from working in the HR department, HRM graduates have opportunities to work as Office Administrators, Administration Managers and General Managers.  These are people who are in-charge of administrative functions of an office and are responsible for making sure that the office, branch office or the head-office is efficiently managed. HRM graduates are highly suited for this type of management jobs as effective dealing with people is fundamental for Administration or General Management.

4] Training & Development (T & D) Manager: 

Training & Development is a great need for highly labour intensive industries such as organised retail, banking, apparel manufacturing, healthcare (private hospitals) and hospitality (hotels and tour organizing) industries. These organisations have to recruit young, low skilled employees from rural areas and train them well to operate in modern work environments. As a result, Training & Development is an extremely important role in these organisations. Best Training & Development Managers have HRM backgrounds.

5] Branch Manager / Outlet Manager in Organised Retail: 

Organised retail is large scale retail operations. These are supermarkets like Cargills, Keells, Arpico and many consumer durables retailers like Singer Mega, Softlogic Max and clothing outlets like ODEL and NoLimits. The industry is growing rapidly and Sri Lankan organised retail is one of the fastest growing in the South Asian region and therefore has many career opportunities for HRM graduates.

Organised retail is highly labour intensive and staff turnover is relatively high. They depend of low cost, labour to keep their operations going. Therefore, there is a lot of potential for HRM graduates to develop a career in being a branch manager or outlet manager in a firm like Singer, Softlogic, ODEL, Cargills, Keells or Arpico.

It would be helpful if you have additional qualifications in management accounting or finance as branch managers or outlet managers have to deal with financial matters and are responsible for meeting financial targets set by the head-office. 

6] Management Consultancy: 

Consulting is a big business in Sri Lanka. For those who are not familiar with this industry, consulting is where specialist firms (called consultancies) help organisations to solve serious management problems they may have. For an example, a firm may ask a consultancy to develop a new strategic plan to help the organisation to grow in new directions. A consultancy may be asked to prepare a comprehensive HR strategy including compensation (salaries and financial benefits), performance evaluation, career progression and staff motivation and labour force planning. Another major area where consultancies are asked to help is in the areas of mergers and acquisitions. This is where firms who plan to take over other firms (E.g. Hemas taking over Atlas) needs help to successfully complete the integration. These are large projects and consultancies require specialists from marketing, finance, strategic planning, HRM, information technology to work on these projects.

There are many top international consulting firms such as KPMG, MT Consulting, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Consulting, Ernst & Young operating in Sri Lanka. In addition, there are many local consulting firms operating. Working for a consultancy demanding and but highly rewarding. While specialist HR consultant firms are very few in Sri Lanka, there are well established consultancies that recruit HR graduates as many large scale consultancy projects require HR specialists to look at the human resources aspect of the projects they are taking.

Many consultant companies offer one year internships for fresh graduates and they expect successful interns to join the organisation as full time employees once the internship period is completed. HR graduates must take consulting as a career seriously and it is very lucrative and most consultancies pay is above market average.

7] OL & AL Business Studies & Economics Teacher:

 As a HRM graduate, you have all the necessary knowledge to teach both local and British OL and AL syllabuses. School teaching has many opportunities in Sri Lanka as there are thousands of international schools and many schools are suffering without qualified, young teachers. Further, when you become a teacher, there are many opportunities to take up extra tuition classes to support weaker students. The minimum fee for a tuition lesson in English medium is about Rs.1500-2000 for a 2 hour lesson. Since your workday finishes at 1.30-2.00pm, there are a lot free time to take tuition lessons.

8] Business journalist: 

An often neglected career is in business journalism. Sri Lanka has a thriving media industry and with the advent of private TV and radio channels, special social media news channels and news websites.

Therefore, opportunities for business journalism is rising. In the age of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, original content created by professional journalists is becoming extremely valuable.

You may have to complete a course in journalism to increase your prospects in this industry, but such courses are easy to find and with a bachelor’s degree, getting accepted into such a course would not be problem.

9] Counseling, Mentoring and Career Guidance: 

Apart from HR specialists and Training & Development Specialists, many labour intensive organisations have executive level positions created exclusively to handle counseling and mentoring of their staff. While this function is not common among small scale organisations, large labour intensive operations such as apparel industry, organised retail, labour intensive light industrial manufactures have such positions in order to increase their staff retention and improve productivity.

You may require to take up a special diploma in counseling from a recognized institution in order to become a certified counselor.

10] Recruitment and headhunting: 

Recruitment and headhunting are related activities. Recruitment is seeking out and encouraging suitable applicants to join an organisation. Headhunting is a special type of recruitment where the target is highly experienced executives for top level positions.

With competition among businesses to recruit skilled and qualified employees become intensive, the role of specialist recruitment and headhunting companies have increased. There are many recruitment and headhunting companies in operation today, and these companies need HRM professionals to prepare job descriptions, person specifications, evaluate CVs and conduct preliminary interviews.

Therefore, HRM graduates should take a serious look at a career in a specialist recruitment and headhunting companies.

11] Labour Law / Industrial Relations Specialist

HRM students have a great opportunity to become a labour law/industrial relations specialist by taking additional qualifications in law. There is a special ONE YEAR Diploma Programme called "Labour Laws and Industrial Relations" conducted by the "National Institute of Labour Studies" which help you to become a labour law/industrial relations expert with HRM special degree.

Those who are interested about this diploma can visit this link below for programme details : http://www.nils.gov.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=99&lang=en

12] Work Place Productivity Specialist.

HRM students have a great opportunity to become a labour law/industrial relations specialist by taking additional qualifications in law. There is a special ONE YEAR Diploma Programme called "Workplace Productivity " conducted by the "National Institute of Labour Studies" which help you to become a workplace productivity specialist with HRM special degree.

Those who are interested about this diploma can visit this link below for programme details

http://www.nils.gov.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=55&lang=en