Careers in Human Resource Development
The field of Human Resource Development is quite obscure to many students today. However, it is an area of study that students should seriously look into as it provide good career opportunities.
The field of Human Resource Development is quite obscure to many students today. If you express a desire to pursue a career in Human Resource Development, the chances are that you would be greeted with an incredulous stare. All this is due to the fact that a graduate program in HRD has remained somewhat in the background, weighed down by more glamorous pursuits like Engineering, Finance and Software.
HRD is one of the neglected fields due to a combination of factors. A small amount of student population is very keen to pursue the passion of their lives, unlike computer science or electrical engineering. Students also like to opt for fields that are time tested and which have been pursued by their seniors or by people they know. Due to these factors, graduate education in HRD does not enter into the mental radar of most students
However, it is an area of study that students should seriously look into because trained HRD professionals play a very vital role in organizations today. It is the HRD department of an organization that is called upon to devise various strategies in order to meet the ever growing and diverse challenges that an industrial environment presents. A course in HRD equips a student with the skills to deal with the entire assortment of issues and challenges that organizations are most likely to be confronted with.
The course offerings therefore ranges from learning advanced communication techniques through better writing to teaching skills in assertiveness; maximizing the organizations potential through employee development programs and how to deal with ones clients. This is just a short snapshot of the course offerings to give you an example. A two-year program in a reputed US University would expose a student to a veritable range of choices as can be gleaned here: http://www.umich.edu/~hrd/programsandcourses/courseindex.html.
It is very important to note that the programs in different Universities may be denoted by different names. In some schools, the HRD programs are offered under names like Labor and Industrial Relations. In such a scenario, the student should take care to actually peruse through the course offerings in each program to ensure that they have found the program they are looking for.
The placements from the top rung schools are almost 100% and so the returns on investments are pretty good. Some companies like Microsoft and General Electric regard a Masters in Human Resource as equal to an MBA program. Organizations also might have a preference for professionals who possess a Masters in Human Resource rather than an MBA professional, due to the fact that a Business degree offers a course in Human Resource only as a concentration.
Some of the top schools that you can apply to are Cornell, UIUC, University of Michigan twin cities and Michigan State University.
