What is a human resources manager and how to become one

I started in Human Resources quite by accident. Back then it was called Personnel, and it was a completely tactical function, in the organization I was working for. I worked for a contractor to the state of California that drilled petroleum, working leases in the Los Angeles South Bay area. I was initially hired as a Production Accountant, which meant I was logging well output—barrels of oil, units of natural gas—via monitoring equipment at the well site. The equipment would generate a paper chart, that I would read and translate by using a special manual spectrometer that would give me the output for that particular well. Even though there were a lot of charts that came in, especially on Mondays, I was usually done by noon. One day I went to my boss to ask him if he had anything else for me to do—I was bored out of my mind. He waved me away, telling me to “why don’t you go down to the Personnel Office and see if they need any help.” So I did—and the rest is history, as they say.

That was 1984. There weren’t any human resources classes or anything that you could take to learn the ropes. It was all on-the-job training. I was a sponge—and since computers were still a novelty for a lot of companies, I tried to learn everything I could about the tool that a computer could be in this role. Lucky for me the stars aligned and the timing was perfect—I was able to dazzle everyone in management with my newfound abilities.

All of this to say—be open to any and all opportunities whether they’re directly presented to you or not. Learn the business you’re in—all the aspects of it. Get acquainted with the people in charge of operations, form working partnerships with them, make sure they know that you’re there to help make their jobs easier in dealing with human capital.

As for the softer side of HR, we are in the people business, after all. Yes we have to justify our existence, our outputs and throughputs, and that’s fine. Just don’t forget that you are going to be dealing with human beings, not widgets or machines or units of output. Every situation you’ll be either involved in or handling in some way will be different than any other one that you’ve handled before, even if the circumstances appear identical. Become a student of the human psyche, personality, behavioral tendencies. You don’t have to become Sigmund Freud—just develop a healthy gut feeling. That will come in time, the more you are involved in typical HR roles a