HR is not a department about a rocket science. The main goal of Human Resources is to keep efficient and cost saving operation with the human capital of the organization. Human Resources must know its HR Role.

The HR Department must fight for its place within the organization. There are companies, where Human Resources is really a strong department and there companies, where Human Resources is a department to be ignored.

When HR knows its position within the organization it can start to play its role. The roles are pretty well defined by David Ulrich. The role of HR can be divided into 4 main segments:

• Business Partner
• Employee Advocate
• Change Agent
• Admin Star

It is important to mention, the 4 roles have the same importance. The HR Department cannot decide about the stress to one role and ignoring issues in different segments. All the roles must be played at the same level to be a “trustful” business partner by other managers.

HR Role is easy to be defined, but to act according the model needs a lot of smart people inside Human Resources, who can distinguish the priorities and strategic tasks, which will help the whole organization.

When you attend the conference of HR Professionals about Performance Management System – the topic for attendees is always the same – the form for Performance Appraisals.

The people do not discuss the principles and processes behind the Performance Management; they really discuss the form to put the formal appraisal in. The formal process and formal appraisal tracking is for many HR departments more important than the real appraisal process and the process of formalized feedback provided to employees.

What is the real purpose of Performance Management for the organization? The real purpose of Performance Management system is to:

• Provide employees with the feedback, which is standardized;
• Provide employees with clear goals and tasks for the following period;
• Communication of company culture and corporate goals to the lower levels.

Today, Performance Management Systems are often mis-used as the system for development of the staff in the organization and as a tool of detection of corporate health. But, in the situation, when this happens, the employees and managers tend to lie to the whole system as no one wants to be identified as a person “highly suitable” for the next round of lay-offs.

The Good Performance Management System should really focus on its main functions for the organizations and it should stay as simple as possible.

A bonus scheme is not an easy task to accomplish successfully. A successful bonus scheme depends on Performance Management and mainly on efficient goal setting process. In many companies the Incentive Scheme and Bonus Scheme are taken as the same items in compensation and benefits area, but they are not the same.

Bonus Scheme is usually linked to the company goals with long term deadlines. But the Incentive Scheme is very individualized and the employee can fully control the income from the scheme. Even in the case the company is loosing money, the excellent salesman can earn a lot of money.

A successful Bonus Scheme needs realistic and achievable goals to be set. When the goals set are not realistic, the employees will not believe in the bonus scheme and they will become de-motivated rapidly.

The efficient bonus scheme needs the following criteria to be met:

• Transparency;
• Simplicity;
• Trust.

The bonus scheme must be transparent to employees. Each employee must have a chance to sit down with a calculator and based on goals or KPI fulfillment, he/she must be able to make a proper calculation of his/her bonus. Many companies do make a mistake – the bonus scheme is not transparent to the employees and they do not know exactly, what behavior and performance is expected from them.

Also – the bonus scheme must be simple. When the bonus scheme is simple, the employees can see, what is expected from them at the first look at the paper. When they do not have a chance to make a proper interpretation of the scheme, the company cannot expect the employees to deliver the results.

And trust – the employees must be sure, the money invested into the scheme will be really released. When the company tries to make a note about a final decision about the money released, the motivation and trust is lost.

The rules for developing the bonus scheme look simple, but they are really hard to achieve in the daily practice. Good luck to accomplish them.

A variable pay or a bonus is the most common part of the motivation of employees. Many companies do believe in the motivational role of variable pay. But is it really truth?

The companies believe the higher proportion of variable pay to the base salaries, the more the employees will be motivated to reach higher goals and better sales volumes. But this kind of motivation works just in the years of good and excellent sales  volumes.

Some companies set very aggressive proportion of base salary and variable pay, which can work in times of excellent sales results and booming net income of the whole company. In the moment, when the sales volumes are stable, the employee can be stressed by the decreasing personal salary and total cash.

The variable pay for employees has to be a “nice extra”, but the company cannot make all the employees depend on the variable part of the salary to survive. It will be the company, who will loose the war - the employees will leave immediately. When their income will get smaller and smaller.

Most people do not understand how their salary is set and what is the structure of their own salary. The bigger the company is the less understandable the system for setting the base salary and variable scheme is understandable for employees.

The salary is one of the most important factors in setting the whole motivation and performance management system in the company. In the small company, it is pretty easy to explain to people the goals, the company has to reach to survive. In large corporations, the employees do not see their own impact on the financial results of the organization and their contribution to the final result.

In small organizations, setting the salary is mainly on the sense and ideas of the founder or a leader of the company and the financial possibilities of the company. In larger organizations, the system for setting salaries must be put in place to keep the organization in shape and to allow employees to trust and feel fairness in the system, when they see their own salary and comparison with the rest of the organization.

Large corporations use services provided by external consulting companies to set the correct level for each position within the organization and to attach correct salary level to each position and to make adjustments every year to stay competitive with market.

Setting the base salary is not that hard task and it is pretty simple to explain it the employees, but with the variable part of the total income - it can be a complete mess. Human Resources tends to provide management with a very sophisticated system, when every calculation needs a lot of time from managers and Human Resources. And - it does not support performance in the organization as employees do not see the impact of their performance to the final result of the company.

Or - do you understand fully to the structure of your salary and how you can improve your total income?

A cover letter is the substantial part of the job resume. The resume shows your experience and cover letter explains the motivation to join the potential employer. For the most wanted employers, the cover letter is more important part of the attractive resume.

Many people have problems to write the attractive cover letter. They do not know, what should be included in their own cover letter. Just people, who are desperately hunting one company to make them a job offer are successful straightaway with their own cover letter.

The attractive cover letter should make three things clear:

• introduction about yourself
• your motivation
• why they choose you

When you are able to describe these three areas in your cover letter, you will be probably very successful during the job interview as the HR Recruiter will not make the job interview about your previous work experience, but the job interview will be about your motivation and how you could help the company to be more successful in the current business world.

Writing the attractive cover letter takes its time. It is not a letter to finish within 30 minutes. It takes several days to finish it as every single word must be well balanced and HR Recruiter must be clear about your personality, motivation and your position within the organization.

Many people believe that building and developing their own career will help them to make their life happier and more successful. But job and career is not the whole life.

A friend of mine was really a heavily focused on developing his career. He was hardworking, making a lot of presentations, every single opportunity to make another career step was not missed.

After several years - he was a manager with a huge responsibility and the company was really recognizing him as one of the key sources of the success. His salary was enormous, but he was not lucky - till one moment.

He got in love and his partner made to do a simple thing - to change his own view of life. The career was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the ability to enjoy common values and their life together.

Do you work on your career and you are not happy? Are you sure you do not want to change your personal values and follow them?

HR Recruiters love attractive resumes and it makes their job a lot easier. Just imagine yourself in their position - receiving tons of resumes and the management press you to close as many as possible of open positions within very limited time frame.

The structure is very important to make your resume look attractive. The structure makes your resume easy-to-read and easy-to-understand. Many people believe, the structure is not that important as the content, but the structure is much more important.

Usual HR Recruiter gets a resume and reads - but not as the article in the newspapers, but the HR Recruiter looks for keywords. And the must important keywords in your attractive resume must be visible and easy-to-find.

The other important part of the attractive resume is the content. You provide the recruiter or the company with the extract of your life and they must recognize your importance for the future of the company. Your attractive resume must raise their interest to meet with you, make a job interview and to have you on the board.

The content must be important facts from your professional life, noticing the main milestones in your life and not hiding any facts from the potential employer. In case of hiding any issues in your history, you can be really sure, they will find out - at the job interview. When the HR Recruiter is not confident about your life and your accomplishment, you are probably lost. The HR Recruiter is a very suspicious person.

And last - when you want to have the attractive resume, do not use a standard template delivered with Microsoft Word. The templates of resumes are nice, but - would you like to see the same design several hundreds times a day? The original design is very important as well.

When you want to be attractive, you need to be different. The same story is valid for your resume as well.

Each attractive employer suffers from the same issue – being overloaded by a lot of resumes of people trying to get a job. In the situation of too many resumes the HR Recruiter tends to select just the most attractive resumes to be sent in the process of job selection.

The employer has a very difficult problem to solve. The process must be quick, efficient and HR Recruiter must keep with his/her personal goals, which is usually about the cost and speed of the recruitment process. There is no time to study all the resumes. The resume must be attractive.

Attractive resume is the resume, which leads HR Recruiter to read it and to know immediately for what position the resume is suitable. It happened just several times during my professional career that the resume was leading me in the process of selection. But almost all the candidates were hired for the job.

What is the attractive resume about? The attractive resume is not a general one, it is the resume, which is custom-made for the position and sometimes for the employer. Each employer is looking for different set of things in the resume and the applicant, who knows the employer best - he/she is the winning candidate.

The attractive resume does not make the HR Recruiter to think about the personality and possible position, the HR Recruiter sees immediately the position and wants to put the candidate in this position. Strange, but it happens. The attractive resume walks the HR Recruiter through life and work experience and the HR Recruiter sees the personality and has no questions.

Many people dream about their dream job. Just few people were able to be hired for their dream job. Dream job is something, when the human being can enjoy working for the company and both sides benefit from the job. It is my own definition.

I interviewed several thousands of people during my professional career in HR and it was always a big disappointment for me, that the candidates expected me to find the best job for them. They did not analyze their skills, competencies and other potential impacts to their job selection.

To get the dream job, every single person must go through personal analysis of at least three main areas:

• personal skills and knowledge
• personal competencies
• hobbies

The skills are really important as applying for a position of a Financial Analyst without any experience in Finance area can be really tough to get it. But many people apply for such positions to have just an issue to complain about. That the company did not invite them for the job interview.

Competencies and hobbies are really important. For people who like to communicate with others, the analyst position is not the best fit. And vice versa.

The people, when applying for a job, they should read the job posting and to make a proper analysis of their personal fit. When they do not fit and they see it is against their personal values, they should decide not to send a resume for a consideration.

The people should really apply just for jobs of their dreams, not every job which looks suitable.