08/01/2014

The Jo B. Wall HR Connection Academy: A Non-profit Connecting Students with HR Careers

By Sheryl Eldridge

Human Resources (HR) represents and connects to all Career Clusters, with HR knowledge being an absolute must for all individuals in the workplace or preparing to transition to the world of work. Direct career pathways include:

 

There are many more indirect HR career pathways that can be discovered, explored, and pursued prior to the transition to college or the workplace. Unfortunately, young adults don’t have the opportunity to learn about this high-valued career pathway until they have made this transition.

 

 

Most HR professionals first discovered HR as a possible career opportunity during college while studying another subject, while in a management role in a different function, or just by chance. Time and money might be lost while being involved in other coursework during school years. With the array of career pathways afforded with HR education, one of the solutions is the introduction, discovery, and exploration through coursework and work-based learning opportunities during the K-12 school years. This key career-planning step would allow young adults who wish to pursue an HR-connected career to make a more informed choice as they prepare to transition to college or the world of work.

 

 

Introducing HR to Students

 

Embedded within the Business Management & Administration Career Cluster offered by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEC) you will find Human Resources Management. This definitely offers an introduction to one HR-connected career pathway, but there is so much more that could be offered to K-12 students that would enhance their knowledge in this area. More topics to share with students include:

 

 

 

How to Incorporate HR Education into the K-12 Setting

 

Our non-profit found that HR-connected material can be incorporated in a variety of ways, using a variety of means. Subtle changes, providing informal education to the educators (mirroring train-the-trainer), to more innovative solutions can be implemented given the right collaboration and buy-in with local leaders, state education representatives, as well as stakeholders within communities. Some examples include:

 

 

 

Non-Profits Can Take Action

The human resource career pathways are vast as are the methods to share this knowledge. Whether students wish to pursue HR or another Career Cluster pathway, they each will need to have basic to advanced HR knowledge before entering the world of work.

Incorporating HR material in the K-12 setting will provide an additional supplement for students to learn all these things and to keep up with the changing world and events in the workplace. As career development practitioners, we need to keep in mind that anyone who ever wants to lead or manage others will be using HR skills. Why not teach those skills from a young age?

 

Resources:

 

NASDCTEc At-a-Glance: http://www.careertech.org/who-we-are/

 

HRCI:

http://www.hrci.org/apply/application-process/phr-sphr-gphr-ca-application-process/approved-position-codes

 

Lee County: http://www.sanfordherald.com/education/x1505316662/Career-prep-programs-a-hit-with-local-students

 

St. George’s Independent School: http://www.sgis.org/page.cfm?p=5806

 

EEOC: http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/visions/index.html

 


 

Sheryl EldridgeSheryl Eldridge, CDF, creator/owner of H&L Support Services, has over 20 years of HR experience, and formed her company in 2006 to provide HR support to businesses. Sheryl has also been involved with in-depth research of how HR education is connected to the career development arena. After being awarded the runner up 2010 Mentor Award by ADECCO, which offered a $1000 education stipend, Sheryl used that gift by enrolling in the Learn North Carolina Online Teacher (COLT) certification program, which she completed in 2013. During the past couple of years, Sheryl has designed and developed three online HR-connected courses, one of which involved collaboration with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Sheryl has been a Career Coach for Future for Kids (F4K) and most recently joined the Development/Public Relations Committee with the nonprofit agency, Stokes Partnership for Children. She is also a Certified Career Development Facilitator (CDF) through NCDA. Sheryl can be contacted at sheryl@hlsupportservices.com.

 

 

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1 Comment

Vijay Paralkar    on Friday 08/01/2014 at 10:38 PM

Sheryl,

I am glad to read this article. I am confident about students will get connected with non-profits using the resources that you have provided.

Thank you so much for this very useful and rare article

Congratulations on your achievements.

With warm regards

Vijay

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the comments shown above are those of the individual comment authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of this organization.