How long has the club been around?
Brianna Madron: We’re MHRC right now, the MacEwan Human Resources Club. We used to be called HRMSS (Human Resources Management Student Society), and that started I believe five years ago-ish. Then we rebranded to MHRC around two years ago by Tiana, she was our old club president.
What do you do within the club?
BM: If you’re not an HR student, I guess the goal is to provide opportunities to practice interviewing skills and meeting and networking with professionals. If you are an HR student, then we’re trying to give you more of an opportunity to meet individuals who work in the pro- fession and kind of see what was their journey, how did they get there.
Christina Saccomanno: HR is very broad but there’s lot of different branches of it, so another opportunity for students in HR is to see where they want to go and what each branch actually looks like, because our classes are pretty general, so meeting with professionals and seeing what their journey was really helps students choose where they want to go.
What have you two gotten out of the club?
BM: Jobs. HR in Edmonton is actually very very small, if you go to enough HR events you see the same people over and over again, so just having the opportunity to constantly see all of these HR professionals and make really valuable connections within the community has probably been the biggest part. As well, just being a part of clubs, you meet cool people who are in clubs, it’s a really awesome experience.
CS: There’s been lots of volunteer opportunities as well that we’ve been able to do as part of the club.
Are you looking to increase your membership or just spread the word about the club right now?
BM: I guess a little bit of both, I think that we offer something to students that not many other clubs can. At the end of the day, once we graduate we all need to go get jobs and you’re going to be dealing with HR at some point in your life for sure, so I guess just the oppor- tunity to either get your resume looked at, or practice interviewing, just meet HR professionals and dig inside of their head a little bit to see what kind of things they look for in candidates, regardless of which industry they’re hiring for, it’s just spreading the word about that and letting students know that we’re here to help if you are looking for advice in that area.
Do you hold networking events and similar events on campus?
BM: We’re hosting a case competition this month, and a case competition is basically just an opportunity for students to solve a business problem in a given time and then they present to judges and stuff, so it’s a really good opportunity to practice your critical thinking, teamwork, presentation skills, and then in March we host a conference and bring in a bunch of professionals and they have break out sessions and it’s a really good opportunity to meet a lot of people, whether it’s students or professionals. Earlier last year we hosted a bake sale for Ronald McDonald (House).
CS: We do a LinkedIn and resume workshop, where students can come in and learn tips and tricks on how to make their resume and LinkedIn stand out.
Why is HR interesting to you?
BM: What drew me to HR was in business you’re always thinking about profiting, and lots of people are like, “Money!”, and “maybe we should increase inventory to make more money,” there’s all these different ways to increase money and profit that a busi- ness is bringing in, and to me, focusing on the people, and figuring out how we can make the people in the organization happier so that naturally they’re more productive and naturally are making more money, but at the end of the day, you’re working for a very extensive period of your life, and I just want to be a part of making that experience a little bit better.
CS: For me, I think the whole thing about mental health is really big right now, and tra- ditionally HR was always seen as coming in when something was wrong, but I think it’s really interesting that HR can be the whole happiness of your organization and make people satisfied, and also bring in profits in a totally different way, but I think that the main thing for me is personally seeing how people can grow with the organization.
MHRC will be hosting their Organizational Behaviour Competition on Jan. 26. For more information about the club, contact the club via their Facebook page or on their website, macewanhrc.com.
Photography supplied. Edited for length and clarity.
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