Dilemmas and outcomes of professional identity construction among students of human resource management

Abstract

Using a sample of final year undergraduates, this article examines how HRM students construct a sense of professional identity over the course of their degree. While students' original decision to enter HR rarely altered at university, their expectations of what 'doing HRM' constituted sometimes changed radically from the need to fit their core values with their occupational expectations and learning experiences. The emergence of different ways of achieving this fit yielded several types of HRM identity. The implications of this fragmenting of student identities for the HR profession and HRM teaching are evaluated.