Career advice needed from people who work in HR (please!)

[mugs]

Apologies in advance if this ends up being lengthy. I originally came across this website whilst I was researching maternity leave/pay about 12 months ago and became hooked (although I've never posted before)! Although I don't have kids and am not planning to in the imemdiate future, I think this is a fab community and this section in particular has become quite a useful resource for me at work.

To cut a long story (fairly) short, I have been working for a large company for 5 years. I've spent some of that time working in an operational recruitment role and now find myself managing a team of HR/Recruitment administrators in a fairly newly established Shared Services team. I love my day-to-day job, and love the fact that I learn something new every day working in HR, but the Company in which I work is NOT ready to adopt the Shared Services model and we SERIOUSLY lack support and direction from senior management - both in HR and in the rest of the business.

I also find managing people quite difficult, and don't really enjoy it. My fave days at the moment are the ones where I find myself sitting quietly getting on with my own bits and pieces whilst my team take care of themselves. I take alot of pride in my work, get frustrated when things are done badly, and like to be in control.

Anyway...a friend sent me a link to an advert for an HR Manager's vacancy in a MUCH smaller company. It's not a company I'm very familiar with, but I imagine their HR team consists of 2-3 people max (not 100% sure of the structure). I applied yesterday.

So my questions - for those of you more experienced in HR than me - are as follows:

• Can you relate to my frustrations with the failure of my Company to successfully adopt the SS model?
• If you were interviewing me for the new role, what might you think about my background, experience, working style (as described above)?
• What are the major differences (aside the obvious ones) between working in HR for a massive company and a small company?

I have no idea how appealing my CV might look to them, but would be very grateful for any thoughts any of you might have! Thanks in advance!

mugs I would like to give you some feedback but I do feel my comments might be more helpful and more pertinent if you were able to share a bit more information.

If you felt able to send me your cv so I can see exactly what you've been doing and where, plus let me know the company or at least the sector you are applying to, I'd be more than happy to take a look and give you some feedback on your experience and on how appealing or not your cv would be to a smaller company. Email address is flowery dot beanbag at ntlworld dot com

I've never worked in an organisation using the shared services model so can't help you with that one.

Let me know if you would rather not do that and I'll give you some more general comments anyway.

Thanks flowery; that's ever so kind of you. I will send my CV over in a sec and would appreciate your honest feedback!