A Q&A With a Compensation Pro on Early Career HR Readiness

Shifting demands on early career HR professionals mean that many of them enter their roles feeling unprepared.

WorldatWork Today (WT) spoke with Justin Sun, a compensation business partner at financial services company SoFi, to get a first-hand HR and compensation pro perspective about how HR leaders can support incoming team members.

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“For Rewards professionals, it’s no longer sufficient to just be knowledgeable in compensation and benefits. The function is increasingly expected to have knowledge of other domains, such as recruiting, talent management, finance and workforce planning.”
— Justin Sun, compensation business partner, SoFi

WT: What are some of the trends or gaps we’re seeing right now as far as entry-level HR worker readiness?

Sun: Employers are increasingly expecting employees to come into the workplace with an actual working knowledge of specific programs and processes — whether it’s how to handle a complex employee relations case or being able to role-play for managers how to communicate a difficult pay message. Keeping in mind HR’s role as a coach is to help leaders make great decisions, the ability of junior-level talent to influence without necessarily having significant hands-on experience continues to be critical, especially when advising senior-level leaders.

For example, if you’re a Rewards professional who’s asked to approve a candidate offer that goes outside of typical pay range guidelines, you need to have the courage to push back and advise recruiters and hiring managers on potential unwanted impacts of a particular decision. You can certainly foster these skills in school, but the classroom doesn’t always prepare you for how to deal with a highly emotional hiring manager who doesn’t want to follow your organization’s compensation guidance or a disgruntled employee who is dissatisfied with their pay.

WT: How are artificial intelligence (AI) and other current work factors changing the HR role in a way that requires a different level of readiness for entry-level or junior-level HR/Rewards workers?

Sun: With AI at everyone’s fingertips, being a “know-it-all” is no longer what defines success in the workplace. As the world of work continues to rapidly evolve, it’s more important to be a “learn-it-all,” where you know how to ask good questions that are going to solve actual business problems and move the organization forward. This comes with understanding an organization’s unique business strategy — for example, how it makes money and what roles drive disproportionate impact to the bottom line — as well as the overall landscape of the industry you’re in.

Artificial intelligence [AI] and [work] automation has created more bandwidth for HR professionals to learn the business and build deeper cross-functional relationships that may have been more difficult to build when you’re, let’s say, heads down in an Excel spreadsheet trying to cobble together large data sets, or building a complex presentation deck from the ground up.

AI also allows you to quickly generate tools and dashboards, as long as you know the right prompts to share, so you don’t necessarily need an entry-level employee to put these resources together from scratch, as has been the case for many years past. With this in mind, many organizations are promoting a focus on working smarter rather than harder, while also ensuring you can own and defend the outputs of the AI outputs you use. In this regard, deep domain knowledge and an understanding of the “why” and “how” continue to be important, particularly when AI of any form is prone to making mistakes.

WT: How can HR leaders and senior HR pros help new colleagues address any gaps in early career skills? What are strategies you’ve implemented?

Sun: For Rewards professionals, it’s no longer sufficient to just be knowledgeable in compensation and benefits. The function is increasingly expected to have knowledge of other domains, such as recruiting, talent management, finance and workforce planning. Providing colleagues opportunities to gain exposure to these stakeholder groups is helpful to ensure they understand the overlaps in goals between functions and show up as a more credible business partner.

When working with early-in-career employees, there may sometimes be bias in assuming they don’t have the skills and experience needed to work on high-visibility, strategic projects. But oftentimes, these employees can come in with a fresh perspective, sharing thoughtful questions and recommendations you might not have otherwise considered. The best way for employees to grow is by taking on projects that stretch them, and they will typically rise to the bar that you set. So, if your organization’s philosophy is to grow talent from within, don’t be afraid to expose junior talent to work that they may not be fully prepared to take on.

As an instructor for the University of Washington’s HR Management Certificate program, I think it’s increasingly important to help students connect theory to practice by having them work through real-world problems using real-world data, so you can bring key learnings to life as much as possible. Case studies that allow you to learn from organizations’ past and recent experiences can be invaluable because common sense or what you learn in a textbook may not always be common practice.

WT: What are ways in which new, incoming or early career HR pros can address some of these potential gaps as they’re preparing to enter a role?

Sun: For entry-level HR professionals, it can be helpful to get as much real-world experience as possible to demonstrate your readiness for the workplace — whether it’s through internships, part-time jobs or continuous learning programs. You don’t necessarily need to have “HR” or “compensation” in your job title to gain skills and experience related to these functions. Continue to invest in your communication, interpersonal and problem-solving skills because these will be transferable to roles across all industries; I don’t think these will be easily replaced by AI.

Oftentimes, I don’t think you’ll ever be fully ready for a particular role that you’re applying to — and if you feel fully ready for a particular role, it might not be a role that’s going to really challenge you and push you outside of your comfort zone. In whatever role you pursue, always stay curious and focus more on being interested, rather than being interesting. This is one way to build credibility and trust with your partners and demonstrate your value in the workplace.

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