Leanne Morris
I have a job that I love. I work with a team of people who constantly impress me with their professionalism, dedication, and empathy for others - it sounds corny, but it's true. I get to interact with a huge variety of stakeholders daily, and I still find myself being bemused or wowed by the professional stories I hear, and the situations I have to broker, every day. I get a buzz from sourcing and securing high calibre professionals from all expert areas of the HR function for interesting companies, and I love helping people find the next great step for their careers. I can "soapbox" for hours about recruitment methodologies, all aspects of talent acquisition and talent management, and what defines “great” HR.
Within my 30 year career, I was a HR Leader (Personnel back in the day). Working in a combined retail and manufacturing environment, with a heavily unionised presence, I learnt my trade with an acute appreciation for P&L pressures whilst wearing steel capped boots and a hard hat!
I've lived in Malaysia, the USA, Australia, England, France and Switzerland. I've been lucky to travel extensively across the globe as part of my work, and still love to travel in my "free" time, especially when I can ride a motorcycle! I love attending motorbike, automobile and truck shows - actually any event featuring engineering, tools and mechanical technology!
…beyond providing safe and pleasant work conditions and fair payment for work done, the employer should have no further involvement with the private lives of their employees.
Too often there is a limited pool of qualified, high performance HR professionals available in the job market. However roles being hired for typically have a long and frequently unrealistic “wish list” of blended skills
Please don't oversell your experience. I can spot B.S. a mile off, and I will rate you more for your honesty if you haven't done everything we need - instead assure me of your plans to learn and fill the experience gaps.
Poor handling of redundancies and layoffs are classic examples of how HR can instantly be labelled as unfeeling, “two faced”, disrespectful and callous.
Ensuring engaged employees is not a fluffy HR concept, nor a passing trend, nor an intangible or immeasurable business theory.
....despite everyone’s claims of commercial savvy, we still see 2 very different camps of HR job seekers. Those who think and talk purely like HR practitioners, and those who think and talk like business leaders who just happen to have the HR specialism in their "toolkit".
Every HR person tells us that they're strong for relationship building, business alignment and partnering, change & project management, etc, etc. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard exactly the same platitudes......
“if you could find us a tall, slim, blonde woman for some office eye candy that’d be great”.
I’m not a fan of affirmative action for hiring to enable workforce equality, because that form of positive discrimination just creates a different type of inequality and resentment.
Please don't give stock standard answers to my questions. It's so ho-hum when you tell me that the company is committed to professional development, diversity, work/life balance and has great promotional prospects.