Overlooked aspect of professional development

One of the very critical and important keys to success which is generally not talked about much for an individual’s overall professional development is how to keep oneself updated and abreast with the latest trends, best practices prevailing in the industry and building strong business relationships outside one’s own organization. I believe this is an area wherein most of us as HR professionals are lagging behind vis-à-vis other professions. Since the nature of HR as a profession is primarily working in our own workplaces and not moving out of the offices, I believe, we need to make deliberate efforts to reach out to the world (industry), know other fellow professionals and make ourselves known as well.

Human Resources being a relatively small and close knit community need to do a lot more in addition to what is already being achieved and drive initiatives like organizing more networking seminars, talks about current emerging trends within the industry, conferences related to best practices etc. with much more passion and a sense of urgency. Such platforms provide tremendous opportunity for the professionals to learn from the experiential learnings of domain experts and senior industry leaders in addition to providing great networking opportunities with professionals from different backgrounds, organizations and varied industries. These opportunities help enhance professional careers, enrich corporate environments and build business relationships. They essentially offer cutting edge information, bring together a community of professionals and experts in unique social settings to help cultivate new business ideas.

In such an endeavor, I shall be presenting my thoughts on Legal Aspects of Employment Practice and Effective Recruitment, Selection and Retention during a Seminar entitled as “Using Human Resource for Competitive Advantage” scheduled on 23rd May 2009, Saturday at Hotel Radisson, Noida.