These are the key insights I got from attending this weeks Seminar HR lecture and reading the

relevant literature on the topic of HR Roles and Competencies: 1. Sit at the table! Last night I watched an inspirational speech given by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, at the TEDx Women Conference held in December 2011. She was talking about why there are so few women leaders today. At one point she said: Dont expect that youll get to the corner office by sitting on the sidelines. Even though she was referring to competent and skillful women all around the world, I thought that her words also made sense in the context of key business functions (e.g. finance, marketing, R & D) and senior managements attitude toward the importance of people management in a company. It seems to me that (I will use my country, Serbia as an example) HR function is underappreciated in most of the companies. And also, for some reason, HR proffesionals are somewhat reluctant to assert themselves to the significant others, that is to the senior management. My personal opinion is that HR practitioners should acknowledge this inconvenient position that they are held in, but also, do something about it. If you are not asked, provide a comment, a remark, anyway. This point was also mentioned during our last lecture when Mr Buiter said that he finds strategic partner to be the most important HR role in Ulrichs (1997) model. Make the top management aware of the value of your insights and perspective! Take initiative, sit at the table! This point was also mentioned during our last lecture when Mr Buiter said that he finds strategic partner to be the most important HR role in Ulrichs (1997) model. 2. HR Analytics and Metrics Even though I have struggled and I am still struggling with this field of HR1, I have realized that this is a viable way for HR to prove its beneficiary effects to the business leaders. As it was pointed out many times in the book Investing in people by Cascio and Boudreau, in order to make people understand you and take your words into consideration, you have to speak their language! We should learn the tricks from our accounting colleagues on designing and implementing HR measures, but we definitely should not let them take over that role. Mr Buiter said on the last lecture that he thinks that administrative expert is the most challenging HR role of Ulrichs (1997) model because if something goes wrong, everyone blaims HR for not doing the job right. Let us not forget that in the beginning the role of HR was based on keeping the records of employees, their payrolls, sick leaves, etc. 3. Choose your business field! Not everyone is good at everything. People are usually more knowledgeable about the things they like to read and learn about. As HR, we can work in many industries, but if we have the opportunity to choose, we should always choose the one that we have already interest in. Why? Because that is the easier way for us to become well informed in the type of business our company is involved in, its value chain model. This competency domain is also mentioned in New HR Competency Framework developed by Michigan Business School (2012). In remainder of my this text I will point out some more insights related to me specifically. 4. Networking

Coming from a psychological background and never having any courses in business or finance and accounting neither in high school nor at the university..

Here I am mostly referring to me being open to opportunities for meeting people important to my future professional career, going to Career days, conferences on HR related issues, contacting people via LinkedIn 5. Know how to lead 6. Know self The 5th and 6th point are somewhat similiar for me because theyrefer to my personal skill, my strenghts and my weaknesses. At the beginning of the academic year we had Personal Skills seminar where we focused on our individual strenghts and the ways we can take advantage of them in and outside of the workplace. One of the things that came out from this seminar was that judging by the experiences of other people that really know me I have many characteristics of a good leader. However, when I was doing a questionnaire about my strong and weak points and also when I was thinking about it for myself, I realized that I dont consider myself to have leadership skills, even though I have some characteristic of good leaders - I am always open to new ideas, get to core issues quickly, read people and situations accurately, and consider myself confident and ambitious, but also sociable, friendly and approachable. This is a good point for further reflection... And also a high time to finish with this learning notes, since I am on my second page now!