HR back to PA

[user50and]

To cut a long story short, I'm 51 and have been a PA/EA/Business Support most of my working life.

Fell into HR (Coordinator level) about 3 years ago but am just not enjoying it anymore, spend most of my time responding to tickets about AL, change of manager etc and to be honest, I'm bored. I'm finding though, when applying for PA roles they're not looking past HR on my CV and I'm not getting interviews?

Any advice??

Try doing a skills based CV with your PA skills first. Google to see examples..

I'd mention in a covering letter why you want to go back to doing PA work. Or put it in your summary about yourself at the top of your CV.

I'm a PA, I hire PAs, it wouldn't put me off that they had a few years of co-ordination work on their CV. It's not like you forget how to be a PA, and it's not hugely different. Maybe your current job section on CV is too big and they are not actually reaching the relevant jobs with the PA work.

Thank you, that's good to hear it wouldn't put you off! I'll have a further re jig of my CV this weekend...

Hello! Just wondering if anyone had any CV tips on this subject. I've tweaked my CV and summary stating that I'm looking to move away from HR to a PA role as that's where my skills and interests lie but I'm not getting anywhere. Either I'm not wording it right or they can't see past my 2 years in HR...

Do a skills based CV so your PA skills come first.

Change your title to "Business Coordinator" for HR department and rewrite the role tasks to reflect the strong PA elements the new company want?
Once you get to the interview you can talk through why you want the move back to the job on offer

Thank you. What are your thoughts on this....

I have been in my role 7 weeks tomorrow, in my first week my LM spoke about, amongst other things, how they like people to develop their career within the company (big, 9k employees) rather than leave and go elsewhere, whether it be in the same department or not. Odd thing to say in my first week i thought but anyway. As I've said in my previous posts, I want to move into a PA role and there is one being advertised internally. I'm only 7 weeks into my 6 month probation but am looking externally as I'm really not enjoying my current role.

Is talking to my LM about the internal PA role a complete no no? Appreciate they'll be pissed off but I'll be leaving anyway if I can get an external PA role....

What's the process for applying for internal roles?

At my previous place you couldn't apply for anything else in probation however I can't see anything in the policy at my current workplace that states you can't apply while in probation...

Go for it.
If you are leaving anyway at best they save on 1 round of external interviews.
With you gone they have 2 open roles.

Go for it, ask manager.

Right. I'm going to speak to my LM tomorrow and explain that the role is not what I expected, that I feel isolated, I'm staring at a screen all day, no interaction with colleagues and that I'm working in a service desk environment. I'm not sure what reaction will be but the best outcome for me would be for her to be supportive and encourage me to apply for internal roles. If she asks what I'd like to do I could then say I feel my strengths, interests and skills lie within a PA role, potentially leading to a conversation about the internal PA role being advertised. Or she could just be really pissed off and suggest I resign.

Can anyone offer any tips about how I could structure this chat?

The only thing here is you don’t want to piss off your current LM too much. Why are you suddenly after 2-3 years disillusioned with this HR role? I’d be slightly concerned that it’s only now you’re raising that this role isn’t what you expected. Did you raise this before either in a chat or appraisal?

You could list transferable skills from the HR side back into the PA job spec and tailor these as to reasons why you’d like the PA role. I’d also say that you prefer interaction with colleagues - team work and show where your skills lie there.

In a previous PA/Team Secretary role I discovered this had a few HR elements and a service desk type model to what you’re doing now. I actually quite liked doing them as it had a start, middle and end process although I could get that you could feel isolated (I did) but then I was there from start of covid for 18 months so we were all isolated as wfh!

Thanks gonna. I've only been in this role for 7 weeks and it's just not what I thought it would be unfortunately. I feel quite isolated, there's no face to face interaction, no one really goes into the office, the team are negative and not happy either...

So, I had the chat and she was supportive, eventually 😁

I have got an interview for the internal PA role next week, I'm just just mulling after answers to the enivitable. 'Why do you want to move after such a short time' question.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be very grateful!

My reasons are that this role has made me realise HR isn't for me and I want to go back to a PA role which is where I feel my skills and strengths lie....

this role has made me realise that I enjoy working for a company with its culture of [...] and while parts of HR isn't for me and I want to go back to a PA role which is where I feel more of my skills are utilised and that the company will benefit more from my strengths lie in this role

good luck