HR Maverick
Angela Livingston
Angela Livingston, SHRM-CP, MBA has nearly a decade of HR experience in high regulated, high tech companies that are Federal Contractors and supported people in other states. She’s worked for an international company with ~20K US employees that did a lot of immigration work, and she’s worked for a company with ~3500 US employees that doesn’t support work visas. One constant is that she’s always working with people empathetically with an eye on integrity.
What words of advice and encouragement would you give to someone just starting out in HR?
My advice for those just starting out in HR is multi-pronged: learn employment law, build your own support network, and learn to analyze data for story telling. It is an opinion of course, but in my opinion you can’t be confident in the advice you are giving if you aren’t well educated in employment law first. You have to be able to pick up on the flags that indicate there’s possibly an employment law element involved without anyone specifically asking you. This doesn’t mean you have to have them all memorized or that you have to become an employment law attorney. It does mean that you need to know when you need to pause a conversation to look up some details, ask other HR professionals, and/or consult with an attorney.
