4 Lessons To Learn From an HR Internship

We have all learnt how important the Human Resource (HR) function is for any organization. It is also the most notorious department, because HR people are responsible for the herculean task of firing people, handing out those dreaded pink slips and bearing the brunt of the frustrated employees. But what is it actually like to be in the department? Here are the four essentials of an HR internship:

Have your documentation game on point

Chances are, the first ever task you’ll do at an HR internship is updating the database with names and details of the employees. Excel is going to be your soul mate in the job. From designing forms, databases, rankings and reward structures, you will have no choice but to fall in love with spreadsheets.
Recruiting the right people is a gamble

If you’re working for a start-up, you will get to interview and screen people too! And, after a while you will feel like you can finally gauge someone’s inclination and interest by the answers he/she gives. It does feel invincible for a while after which you realize no person can be known in entirety through just an interview. A person who seemed pretty eager to work in his application might end up as the most indolent of the lot.
The work is never over

Recruiting is a tedious job, what with all the sorting of applications and shortlisting and e-mailing, and although HR department wants to go on a hiatus after initial recruitments, the work never really is over. Performance reviews and appraisals, followed by implementation of the reward structure are some of the few tasks.
People are a tough nut to crack

If you think you have figured out how the employees work, think again. People are difficult to manage. They keep changing, they keep learning, and this implies that you can never know how someone’s going to react to any change brought in the organization.