Why Did We Ever Go Into HR?

Breitfelder and Dowling are two recent Harvard MBAs who have worked in fields typically chosen by alumni of esteemed business schools: strategy consulting, investment banking, you know the score. Ultimately, however, these promising young professionals decided to do the unexpected and enter human resources. They switched gears not to achieve work/life balance or avoid tough challenges but to get in early on a good thing, as any smart value investor would. HR sits, according to the authors, in the middle of the most important competitive battleground in business. Finding and retaining the best talent has become an increasingly vital competitive advantage, making HR a truly strategic function for any company today. Breitfelder and Dowling have seen this shift firsthand in their work at Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and MasterCard-and have had it confirmed by their colleagues and former classmates at other top-tier firms. Such companies recognize the real value of excellent, motivated employees and are investing time and energy accordingly; in the process, they are defining what the authors call "the New HR." This HR of the future has five characteristics: It, like a business school, promotes active learning; it serves as an engine for both savings and revenue; it hatches and harvests ideas across organizational boundaries; it makes big places smaller by connecting people intimately and often; and it focuses on the positive, moving beyond fixing problems and enforcing rules to enhancing employee engagement and capitalizing on people's strengths. If that's what HR is becoming, why wouldn't you go into it?

• Career planning
• Employee retention