I have a niece and nephew who have, interestingly enough, both picked Human Resources as their college major. The choice is interesting to me because I have worked within the HR software world for 16 years. Five of those years were in Sales with Sage HR Software, nine as the owner of my own HR software reseller business, and now two with CompareHRIS.com. Given my background, I thought I could offer them some helpful advice on things they can do before they graduate to improve their chances of landing a job and starting a career in Human Resources. Well, we always need new content for CompareHRIS.com and HR-SoftwareBlog.com, so you get the advice as well.

What type of job market will future Human Resource grads be entering?

I, and a lot of my friends, graduated from college in 1992. That was not a good job year for college graduates. Very few of us had jobs waiting for us when we graduated. I graduated with a BS in Accounting and was sending resumes all over the place from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. I had one interview with a very prestigious CPA firm in Atlanta. The partner who interviewed me said he was not going to hire me because I did not live in Atlanta and his firm was not going to hire a newly graduated accountant who did not live in the city. His advice was for me to pick a city I wanted to work in, move there, and then find a job. Looking back, it might be the best advice I was ever given. I decided on Tampa, Florida and actually was not able to get a decent starting position in Accounting. Instead, I ended up getting a job with Sage Abra software and that sort of determined my existing HR software career path.

A friend of mine graduated in Electrical Engineering. A year and six months after graduating, he was still sending our mass resumes and waiting tables. He realized that he was quickly forgetting the skills he had acquired in school and was getting nervous. In a sheer act of desperation, he sent a resume and a special cover letter to a large number of firms he knew hired Engineers. In his special cover letter, he wrote that he was a degreed Electrical Engineer who was having a tough time getting his first professional position. He offered to work for $7.00 an hour for one year and then, based on experience and job performance, he would expect reasonable starting engineer pay. The plan of "desperate times calls for desperate measures" worked and a year later he was getting paid a reasonable salary for his services. My friend still works in engineering today and he’s had a very successful career because of his initial bold move.

I tell you these stories because you need to be prepared for what’s in front of you. In a tough job market, like what we will see for the foreseeable future, good grades will help but it’s not enough.

What can the student do before they graduate to stand out in Human Resources?

Creating your first professional resume while in college, or shortly after you graduate, is not an easy task. So you pile on the fluff with resume clichés. You know, "I am looking for an opportunity with a company that will benefit from my unique capabilities and skills," I am a "quick learner," able to "multi task," or I am an "aggressive self starter." There are others who pitch the experience they have learned in their Greek organization or skills they learned being involved in school clubs or intramural sports. I am not trying to mock the resumes of young college grads, I did the same thing; but don’t for a single minute believe that experienced recruiters have not seen this a thousand times before. So if grades are not enough and college involvement is not enough, what is?

Think of it this way; when you graduate consider the chance that every HR job you apply for may have a hundred other applicants. What is going to make your resume stand out or, at the very least, place you in the ten the company calls in for an interview? Here are a few tips I would suggest applying now to stand out in human resources:

1. If your school has a student HR club, join it, and become actively involved. Those that graduate ahead of you may be able to help you down the road.

2. If your city has a SHRM chapter, join, and become active. One of the members may be your future boss; it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and meet them.

3. Start building your professional network. With the above two items you should start to meet a network of people who can prove very helpful to your future job efforts. Facebook.com and, even more so, linkedin.com can be great options for developing your online network of industry professionals.

4. If you are going to pursue a technical career in HR, consider taking IHRIM.org’s HRIS certification program. It’s a fairly new program and obtaining the certification would absolutely make you stand out.

5. Look into summer internships within the HR career field. Sure, it might be fun waiting tables at the beach during the summer like I did, but it does nothing for your resume.

Again, I am not a HR professional. There are others that could probably offer better advice on this topic but at the very least, these items will help you and your resume stand out in what will continue to be a very competitive job market. If I have scared you, good! Sometimes the best motivation is fear. Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions about anything mentioned above. If you are a HR professional and have additional advice to offer, please do so.