In China, the HR profession has relatively low barriers to entry. Even today, many HR Departments are filled with HR people without any formal HR qualifications.
Traditionally, vacancies in the HR Department were taken up by graduates of English schools or Finance professionals whose talents were incommensurate with their new responsibilities and duties.
Another wave of HR professionals comes from consulting companies. Just like advertising agencies develop talent for their in-house Marketing Department, recruitment agencies and HR consulting companies produce a talent pool of in-house recruiters and HR executives. These candidates may find themselves overwhelmed with the amount of daily Admin work that requires their attention.
The final batch of HR professionals comes from an Operations background. This group usually starts their career in Marketing, Sales, or Product Development. They in fact have very limited HR know-how.
To climb the corporate ladder, HR people from all three groups must prove that they have a solid understanding of the company's business, can contribute to and collaborate effectively with senior management, and convert data into management information. In a nutshell, the best HR people are entrepreneurial, highly dedicated, solutions-oriented, and hungry to work with people to drive change, development and training, and individual/team/company performance.
