A wealth of HR experience in a real, fast-paced, constantly changing business environment.
We sat down with Luke Turner, Gist’s Human Resources Graduate Advisor based in Thatcham about his 2 years with Gist.
Current Placement: Thatcham
Previous Placement: Hemel Maylands
Home: Leeds
University: University of Northumbria
Course: Business Studies
What will I be doing?
The Graduate scheme offers a real breadth of challenges and experience across a large network of sites, giving you the opportunity to build relationships with a number of different key-stakeholders in the business. Your day to day activities will vary depending on the business’ focus and site priorities; often a mixture of recruitment and selection, network wide HR projects, coaching and development of first-line managers, ER / Absence related issues and forward thinking site based training initiatives and engagement activities. Overall you will be a fundamental source of advice and support for the sites you work at.
What has been your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge for me personally was to adjust my style of working, much of the day-to-day work within HR is very ad hoc which requires you to manage your own timescales and tasks to ensure that you deliver on a wide and varied set of tasks. At first I found this quite difficult as University life is quite structured, but once you get the hang of it, it is an invaluable skill in a fast-paced working environment.
How much responsibility do you have?
You will have a lot of responsibility from the outset, as a HR advisor you will look after the day-to-day running of the site, how you run the site will be determined by you and your HR Manager. Ultimately you will be involved in giving advice towards a number of ER related cases in which there is a very real responsibility and outcome dependent upon the case. Ultimately the amount of responsibility you have is dictated by what you choose to be involved in, and you will be responsible for the site you are assigned to.
What advice would you give to future students?
Be yourself, make sure you let your personality show and use this to build strong relationships on site with your peers and stakeholders – the key to being a good HR representative on site is being able to listen to those around you and help them tackle their issues while focusing on the people involved and getting a positive outcome.
What will I get out of it?
A wealth of HR experience in a real, fast-paced, constantly changing business environment. You will face a different challenge or experience almost every week, managing these are the best way to get experience in a varied generalist HR role but it also gives a valuable insight on how to conduct yourself within a business environment.
FInd out more about Gist here.