My Best Career Mistake: Becoming an HR Representative

  I really love LinkedIn this week as folks brutally honest write about their experiences in the wide, wide world of business. I will describe to you what I feel was the best mistake I ever made.
  One of the many times that I worked for a large retail store, a position became available that I thought would give me a break from the general public and allow for me to learn the actual administration of business. I saw it as a stepping stone into the upper echelons of my chosen career field.
  It was a lead position for the store I was working for at the time. I thought it could really put my people skills to use behind the scenes. I had already been a sales associate for ten years and thought that it would be a great change. These are some of the blunders that I made:

• I thought I would be a real voice for the associates. Little did I realize that the sole purpose of my position was to protect corporate interests concerning federal regulation.
• I was performing duties that had nothing to do with Human Resources. My team had to worry about the cash office, deliveries through a third party company, tax season, etc. It was just a plain mess!
• Very little interaction with people. I had no problem of not dealing with the public anymore but my office was a very lonely place. Even after training, I very rarely saw the employees until they needed me. 
• I detested the paperwork. Every office job has paperwork monsters, including education. But this was far from the paper monsters I wanted to be a part of. 
• I did not have a backbone. I soon realized that there were some very difficult decisions and situations that I had to be a part of. From firing people to sending them for random drug tests to telling them they could not work until they had a new green card. While this job helped me grow a spine, I took many of these situations to heart and you cannot have that as an HR manager for a large corporation. 

  Within a year, I went back to my old job for a different company with all this knowledge of what it was like to be on the other side. I felt very lucky to have seen and experienced both sides of the fence. My personal growth was phenomenal during that time frame and I feel it makes me a better leader for my own small enterprise.