HR Manager Review

I am a generalist HR Manager. I am responsible for all areas of the employee lifecycle: recruitment, onboarding, benefits, training and employee relations. I am primarily focusing on recruitment at the moment, due to the growth of the business, and do a lot of interviews and reviewing of CV's / job adverts. I am also helping to manage the Covid-19 protocols and risk assessments for a return to the office.

I have learnt loads of new skills since undertaking an apprenticeship and becoming a HR Manager. The main skill that I have development is my stakeholder management and confidence, as I now have to deal with a number of senior stakeholders on a daily basis. I am used to assisting them with their recruitment needs and analysing their team needs. I have also hugely improved my technical HR knowledge, particularly in employment law.

I throughly enjoyed my apprenticeship programme. It was easy to manage alongside full time work, and the support I had along the way was great. My tutor in particular understood my needs and how 'hands on' she needed to be with my learning, which I really appreciated. The actual course content was also great, and always extremely relevant to the day-to-day of my role.

My programme was very well structured, and the constant contact with my tutor meant that I was able to keep on top of my workload and also manage the CIPD qualification well alongside my full time role. I found that my tutor was organised and was able to pick things up where we left off with ease each time we met.

I received a great deal of support from my current employer whilst studying. I received a certain number of paid time off each year as 'study days' to ensure that I had time to complete the work. Also, there were never any questions asked nor any hurdles for when I had to have my monthly apprenticeship meetings. As a whole, I found that the apprenticeship hardly interfered with my full time job (and vice versa) at all.

My training provider was really supportive with my qualifications. There was always plenty of feedback and guidance on how to get the most out of the qualification. The most useful part of it was having a professional who had also completed the qualification herself, as that meant that I was able to get first hand experience and guidance.

Now that I am qualified, the main thing that has changed is my confidence and credibility. I feel that, now that I am fully qualified, the confidence I have when I am making a HR decision has grown. This allows me to make faster decisions and also argue my case more confidently if there are question marks around best practice for HR.

Our work is a cycling based company, so the our social events are typically sports orientated. Whilst I do not cycle, I do run. We have a company strava group where colleagues give each other kudos and we support each other with training. I have also entered a race with another colleague later this year. Twice yearly we also have socials where we are encouraged to meet as a whole workplace and socialise.

Yes

There is a great culture and sense of community here. The best thing about working with sporty people in media is that every is very relaxed and informal with on e another. This leads to a really chilled feeling in the office, whilst still being surrounded by some of the best people in the industry and getting things done at a phenomenal pace.

To really show you passion for sports or the sports community. This doesn't mean that you have to be really sporty of active yourself, but watching sport and having an understanding of the excitement around it is key. Also, try to demonstrate your research on the business - there are loads of different channels and ways that it makes money, so showing that you have done some research on this is vital to be successful at an interview.