Breaking Into Human Resources in 90 Days | Career Chat with Lashaunique Plummer

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Welcome to another Career Chat, Bite Size Inspiration on the Transparent HR Podcast.
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It's your host, Prince Tate, and I am excited and thrilled for the guest that we have for today.
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Her name is Lashanique Plummer.
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She's also the host of the HR Pivot podcast.
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Lashanique, welcome to the show.
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Hi, thank you so much for having me.
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Can't wait to get into this conversation today.
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Yes, yes.
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So for our career chat today, I want you to share with our listeners a little bit about what you do, and even what your podcast is about, but I also want us to dive into the big question that a lot of people ask me today, and that is how do people break into HR, or how do they pivot into HR, if they're already started their career?
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Yeah, yeah, I can't wait to jump into that question, because it's such a common question, right and, and one that gets people spinning for some time, right, so I'm excited.
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So so a little bit about me and my career.
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Excited so.
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So a little bit about me and my career.
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So I started as a business person, right, a business degree and then took my career to sourcing, and I had no idea what sourcing was.
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uh, let me tell you I don't.
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I just took the first thing right out of uh school, um, and quickly knew that wasn't for me.
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I learned a lot, though, about working globally and all the different things and cross-functional skills, so I took all those transferable skills and I stayed with.
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The company I worked with at the time was Target, and decided to go into store retail leadership, did that, loved that too, and then I fell in love with engagement and motivation and like all the things people get excited about when it comes to HR development and developing people and even performance management and all the things, and so when I pivoted my career, I was able to do it in 90 days, which was amazing, and I didn't realize at the time how unique that was, which is kind of a prelude to why I decided to help people do that.
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But then I grew my career very quickly, starting out as an HR generalist, so I did not start as, like, a coordinator or somebody that's very entry level, which is like what a lot of people assume.
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I was able to start with a 70k salary even though I didn't have correct experience.
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The, the job description said you need five years of experience.
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I didn't have five years experience, um, and then I just like, because the, the company, the industry, um, my manager, like everything aligned, I was able to grow to a global HR business partner, and so that was my most recent role.
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I did everything in the middle, everything in between, hris, I did talent management.
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I even stepped in as HR interim director for some time.
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Oh, wow.
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I was like y'all want me to do what?
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That's awesome.
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So I did that, which you know zero out of 10 recommend and 10 out of 10 recommend, because you learn a lot when you step in as an interim person.
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But also you know, there's a lot to do when you're, when you're stepping up, and at that point I only had two and a half years of HR experience.
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So my role now to answer your question my role most recently that I, that I was in Global HR Business Partner, that I was in Global HR Business Partner, it just means that I partnered with executive leaders to make sure the business is running smoothly right, and that means I touch a lot of different things, which is how do people onboard, how do people get hired, how do people be successful in their roles or change Anything in between?
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You know, we're a little more than just benefits.
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I know a lot of people are like you know, hr does benefits and do any of you know, of course, any of the exits or anything in between there.
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And so what I love about HR business partner is you get to problem solve, okay, you get to probably get to solve all the business problems and then also make sure that the people are taken care of while you're solving those business problems, and so there's nothing more satisfying than that for me is to be able to say I got a business issue, but also I got to make sure I'm thinking about the people during this business change, right, it can be.
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It can be so many different things.
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It could be from changing the performance objectives for the year all the way.
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We need to.
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We need to rethink our whole business and the innovation of our business to keep up with our customers, to keep up with whoever right, and so, so, yeah, so that's what I would say a little bit about me and about what I do.
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So, yeah, I would love to answer the question too, but let me know I'll pause there first.
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Let me know if there's anything else.
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So how did you make that transition?
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And again, you talked about less than 90 days getting into an HR generalist role, where you, per se, did not qualify for the role, didn't have the experience, and guess what?
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I'm going to tell you this I have somewhat the same experience.
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So I started my career journey as an intern in 2018 and made my way just, you know, just working, doing everything that that organization wanted me to do in a generalist space, and I was still in college and I ended up getting a full-time position in an HR generalist role, and so you know, we have a lot in common there in how we started our career journey.
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But how did you do that?
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With no I won't say no experience, but with minimal experience?
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Can you talk a little bit about transferable skills?
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So tell us, and for that person that is already working, what advice would you give them to say, hey, this is how you can get into HR?
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Yeah, for sure.
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Yeah, I love this question so much.
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So, yeah, I'll boil it down to make it simple.
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I do think, overall, I recommend if you're interested in HR this is the first thing I just want to say If you're interested in HR and a lot of people they're just there's something that tugs at their heart, tugs at their soul to be in HR because they want to help people.
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I just, first and foremost, is one like make the decision, know that you can make it happen.
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Right.
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Like come from that energy, like I can make it happen and I'm committed to it, even if it for me specifically, and maybe it might not take 90 days, but I'm gonna make it happen.
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Right.
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So that's first and foremost.
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And I that was part, like if I had to start with, like what was probably the biggest thing for me was mindset in terms of I'm this is what I want to do and I'm gonna make it happen.
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Because when I did come up against people who told me that I couldn't make it happen, it might also be the.
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Detroit in me because I was like, watch me work okay.
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So I you know, it's a little bit of the Detroit grit where it's like, okay, I can, I can make it happen.
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I'm not going to, I don't have to take a 50, like 50K, which would be a significant pay cut.
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I don't have to do these things.
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I'm going to see how I can make it work.
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So that would be the first thing I'd say.
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The second thing I would say is that also believing and I'm going to, we'll work through it with the impact model, we'll work with some other suggestions as well.
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But also I want you to even if you don't believe me, I'm going to try to help you believe this that any transfer, any skill that you have today can be utilized in HR Full stop.
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Any skill you have can be utilized in HR and is valuable to HR.
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Give us, give us an example of one skill that you would say that people won't think about so.
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So one thing that we do in HR all the time change management.
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Big word, right, Big scary word, and I know people are like change of management, experience Hold up.
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Let me help you out.
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So almost every single role that you're in, you have to deal with a form of change management.
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You just don't call it that.
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So what I say to people is that you're a transferable skill, is a skill you already have.
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It's just known by a different name in your specific industry or role.
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Okay, and so change management.
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As an example, when I was in retail right, I dealt with change all the time, new guest rollout policies.
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I dealt with, you know, changes to systems that I had to roll out for my team and for our leaders, for guests, right, Everything in between.
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So if you could just like take a step back, whatever role you're in, for guests, right, Everything in between.
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So if you could just like take a step back, whatever role you're in customer service, if you're in real estate, if you're in like, there's always something new or some change that is rolled out.
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Now, of course, there's different levels to it, of course, but I can guarantee you that I would be shocked, and there has never been somebody that I've worked with that has not had some form of change management Right.
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And so change management, communication, project management Again, I think we give these words a lot of power and if you don't have credentials right, if you haven't had a certification yet, which don't even get me started on, then we feel like we don't have the experience Right and I just think it's the biggest, it's the biggest scam of all time.
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But just like you have the experience, so that that would be the first thing in terms of transferable understanding, transferable skills, the other thing that I think really helped me in being confident in my transferable skills was making sure that translated onto my resume.
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So in today's market you have to have a very magnetic resume.
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But also your resume can't be and I know this is going to go against everybody, but cannot be the regurgitation of a job description.
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I shouldn't be able to take that resume and drop it on somebody else's desk and I don't know that it's print right, I don't know that it's someone, that it's specifically unique to you.
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So you have to be able to find that unique combination that makes you you.
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For example, I had a client who talked about when we spoke together.
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She would talk about how she's passionate about mentorship.
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She was passionate about like X, y and Z and then when I looked at her summary on her resume I was like where is that?
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Yeah, it didn't reflect it.
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It didn't reflect and I can get, like most people, their resume them and the real them.
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They usually are not matching.
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And I'm like I don't know who you really are I don't know who you actually are.
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I see a job description.
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I call it the kitchen sink.
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I see a kitchen sink of a job description, but I don't see you.
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Where are you?
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So making sure that your resume flex who you are as a person and infusing it.
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Yeah, it's a lot of tools out here nowadays, especially in 2025, to help with resume building, but some of those tools cannot help you to really pitch yourself and say, hey, this is who I am Right.
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Yeah.
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So, yeah, absolutely, and I think AI is such a such a great tool to your point, like AI is such a great tool, to your point, like AI is such a great tool.
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But, yes, I do find people getting themselves lost in the AI tools as well.
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So you kind of got to like be able to pull that out is not being afraid to network in 2025.
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Right now, 300 plus applications per role, if not more.
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If you really want to get ahead and you want to actually be put ahead of the people in those tiles, then you can't be afraid of networking.
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Networking is key.
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That's how I landed my first role.
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It was purely networking.
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Purely networking.
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That's awesome.
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I found someone on linkedin, a stranger.
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She referred me to an event.
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I went to the event.
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I found a recruiter.
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The recruiter remember that's awesome so that's awesome that was part of my story as well.
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Um, and then the interview skills and 20 tweets like so.
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A little different from when I pivoted, I would say.
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Um, interview skills have been elevated quite a bit, or the need to have a very sophisticated interview skill set has elevated in 25 really for, I think, many reasons.
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One, this is an employer's market, but then two, just like over time, I think everything always elevates a little bit, and so if you're still using the skills you'll use 10 years ago when you graduated college, it's time for a refresh.
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Yeah, refresh, refresh.
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Well, lashonique, thank you so much for joining us today in today's career chat.
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Bite-sized inspiration.
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Hey, if you're listening in to today's chat, I want you to make sure that you go back and listen to Lasha Neeks a full episode where she shared valuable nuggets on interviewing like a pro in 2025.
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We'll see you on the other side, you.