Kelley School of Business
Human resource (HR) managers are the epitome of “people” people. Think of them as casting directors who help put the right people in the right job—and then develop the culture and compensation packages to keep them motivated. But the focus of HR is bigger than acquiring and managing talent.
While human resource managers do recruit, hire, train, and assess a company's talent—what many would call an organization’s true assets—their core role is to understand how to get people to be the best they can be and turn their performance into success for the organization. To that end, human resource managers play a strategic role, impacting decisions about organizational structure, change management, work design, and more.
When you enter the human resource management field, you may travel the traditional route of human resources and labor relations—such as compliance with employment and labor laws, management development, wage and salary administration, organizational planning, and contract negotiation—or you may choose to jump into the newer areas in the behavioral sciences, tracking their implications for human resource management programs.