How many employees make up an HR department?
Asked by
lbwhite89 (
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December 23rd, 2010
I’m working my BA right now and I’m really interested in working in HR once I graduate.
I work at a bank now and we have quite a few people in our HR department (probably around 10). However, my boyfriend works at a factory and there’s only one HR employee that runs the entire department. So, in general, how many people work in a company’s HR department?
I read on bls.gov that the job outlook for HR assistants is supposed to slowly decrease through 2018 but HR manager positions are quickly increasing through 2018. I’m graduating in 2013, so I’m wondering exactly how difficult it will be the find an entry level job in HR so I can work my way up before these jobs disappear.
The city I’ll be looking for work in is Charlotte, NC if that helps.
Also, if I get an internship in the HR department of a company while I’m in school and then can’t find work in HR after I graduate, is that a wasted internship or could it help me with other jobs as well?
What other jobs like HR could I look into as a back-up plan with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Business Administration?
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8 Answers
A lot depends on if you want to work in an HR Department with others or would be equally happy being a solo HR Manager (Office Manager). Most places I’ve worked (law firms) have had a single HR/Office Manager, even the large ones. At most the HR Director/Office Manager has had a single assistant.
If you are really interested in HR, you might also consider working for a professional placement agency. Those essentially are one big HR Department and I’ve always thought placing different people with different types of organizations would be more interesting than just working at one place. A little more challenging perhaps, finding the right person for various employers.
The HR dept where I work has a recruiter, a generalist, an admin, and a manager and thats just for my site. I work for a huge company that has similar setups (and bigger) elsewhere.
You could probably come to my company and take over the whole department as an intern. HR at my place has the least helpful, most politically motivated and silliest (and apparently laziest) people around.
If you’d only answer an email once in awhile you’d be head and shoulders above everyone here, and it’s a fairly large group.
Some days weeks their voicemail messages are the most helpful part of the department.
I depends on the size of the company; the HR department is usually one of the smallest in the company.
For the companies I’ve worked for, it’s been about 1 HR person for each 40–50 people.
I guess it depends on how wasteful the company is.
Our HR department has about 100 people for a company with 15,000 employees nationwide. Some of the roles include:
Recruiters – College, general recruiting
Training
Compensation
Performance metrics
Succession Planning
Communications
Benefits Planning
Retiree Programs
Employment law
Diversity training
There are lot of uses for HR internship experience; every company has HR needs.
Check out www.shrm.org Search internships – useful information there!
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