Building A Career In Human Resources In Nigeria

Human resources, like most career choices, requires that a person has a passion for people development and growth. Your passion for people development is crucial in human resources; without it, your drive may fade after a few months or years on the job.

What fuels your drive to help people, improve their skills, and engage the right employees is passion.

Passion means having the desire to recognize potential in people and/or helping them identify areas where they need to improve to make the most of their lives.

Passion also involves the ability to recognize the right talents for an organization's manpower planning. By passion, I’m referring to empathy—putting yourself in other people’s shoes and understanding their feelings or thoughts. It’s about your ability to read minds technically and see through their eyes.

Therefore, it’s very important to discover whether you are passionate about human resources or if you just want to do it. This will determine how you perceive yourself on the job in the long run, especially your level of job satisfaction.

When building a career in HR, the following are very important:

1. Your passion.
2. Your degree.
3. Certifications.

To expand on these points, we will discuss them further below, and I would also like to entertain questions.

1. Your Passion: As discussed above, your passion is vital to excelling in this kind of job. It is a prerequisite for survival. You cannot harbor hate in your heart and excel. Most of your decisions and choices will be biased, unfounded, and inaccurate. Being passionate does not mean you will ignore logic.

For example, when recruiting and certain applicants are not fit for a role, you could spend a minute or two exploring the individual’s resume and pointing out what you think was wrong or right, where you think they should improve, and why.

2. Your Degree: Sometimes, this may not be as important if you begin your career in HR as an intern. This means that you are willing to be trained, and during the course of this, you may prove yourself ready to take on the role. Sometimes, too, due to various certifications, your degree choices may be overlooked. Note that I am using Nigeria as a case study. You may be certified as an HR professional while your degree is in chemistry.

However, in modern times, corporate organizations are moving towards employing people who have "discipline disparity." For example, a combination of mathematics and human resources or a combination of chemistry and human resources.

If you recognize early that you want to be trained as a human resources professional, then it is important to get a degree in the social sciences or in personnel management.

Currently, the University of Lagos offers second degrees in: a. MILR: Masters of Industrial and Labor Relations. b. IRPM: Industrial Relations and Personnel Management. c. MELS: Masters of Employment and Labor Studies, etc.

3. Your Certifications: This means getting certified as a proper practitioner. Certifications such as CIPM (The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management) and The Institute for Human Resources, which specializes in IHR Certification, are valuable.

I hope you find this information useful and look forward to hearing from you.