Retraining in HR

[BranchingOut]

I am trained as a teacher and got to a senior school management post before maternity leave, however I am now wondering about making a career change.

Has anyone taken a one year Masters with CIPD qualification course? Any suggested places in the London region? Or are there any distance learning options?

What sort of job would that course enable you to do? Is part-time working accepted in the HR sector?

Would my previous experience in school management be useful? eg. with all the staff handling and management of sticky situations that entailed!

I live in London so am near a lot of big corporate recruiters.

Anyone?

Hi Branching out, MOL do the CIPD qualification via distance learning, so worth a look on their website. The course has changed quite a lot since I started it (I'm due to finish it this year) but I've generally found it quite good.

I think your experience in school management would be useful, but HR can be popular/competitive so ime you'd really need to 'sell' your relevant skills on CV/application forms. I ended up in HR after a career change and initially a lot of employers/agencies ruled me out because I didn't have HR experience (despite having a lot of relevant management experience).

Getting a CIPD qualification is definitely the best starting point though - good luck!

I think it depends whether you are in the public or private sector. I am a Group HR Manager in the private sector, I do four days a week. I only got this job part time as it was initially maternity cover for 9 months. Thankfully, the previous incumbent didn't return, and I retained my part time role, been here three years now.

I have been in HR for ten years, all private sector, and I don't recall many part time colleagues at all, tbh.

Public sector may be different. I think your previous experience would be excellent, but what you must remember is that the role of HR is to advise, not to actually deal with the situations, that is the job of the line managers. Most people I have met started at the bottom, to be honest.

Don't let me put you off though, if you feel passionately about a career in HR, definitely look into it!

Reading that back, it sounds a little condescending, not intentional. If it helps, I said to one of my Managers this morning, 'Just let Mummy have a look for it.'