Tips for College Students and Recent Graduates: Careers in Benefits

After speaking to several students and recent graduates - there was one common theme that I have noticed, and that was a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of the different roles, job families and opportunities offered within large companies and a very strong desire from them to get this information.

Colleges have a vested interest in ensuring that Management Consulting, Financial Accountants and Software Engineers are well trained and versed in the business elements of their functions since they can use those metrics to help boast job placement and tuition rates, but most college graduates who enter the Corporate World will not be doing it in these fields.

Instead, you will be making up of all the other extremely important but not quite as well-known or "sexy" positions that still command good pay, prestige and development. You will become Price Analysts, Sales Operation Managers, Business Design Strategists and Social Media Managers. You will be the next generation of Benefit Administrators, Product Insight Specialists, Campaign Optimizers and Contract Specialists.

I have therefore decided to start a series of articles dedicated to helping explain and providing guidance and information on these not-so common job fields so that college students can learn more about them now, and decide if it's something that seems appealing to them.

After-all, that's the catchphrase of this project, Broken Major: Less Chance. More Choice.

So in this first newsletter - we will be covering the maybe-not-quite-as-exciting-but-nontheless-important areas of HR: Benefits.

I decided to start with this one because it's dear to my heart. This was where I got my start in HR and if you go to any Social Media page of HR students and HR recent grads who are all clamoring with the same question of "how do I break into HR" - I get a little confused at how many people give the advice: "Recruiting".

On one side, I can understand the thought process. Recruiters are the most well known arm of HR. It is ...perhaps...somewhat easier to get into a job of being a recruiter if you start at an agency level and are willing to accept a low pay (or no pay, just commission) situation - but I personally believe that it is MUCH easier to get into HR by pursuing the real silent heroes of HR. Arguably the one department who literally spends all of their time focusing on bringing and delivering value to employees, but who nobody ever knows: Benefits

I did a few quick searches - don't quote me specifically on the math, but after 20 side by side positions of Recruiters and Benefits, the candidate application pool for Benefit positions seems to be about 71% less. Naturally companies don't employ quite as many Benefit positions, but they are very dependable and consistently under-valued skill.

Companies NEED Benefit Administrators (or will at least outsource them). There are so many legal and compliance related elements that this position will always be in demand and finding good Benefits employees is TOUGH.

The work itself isn't necessarily difficult (at least I did not find it to be) - though in my experience it was far less intense. Instead of quick never-ending transactions, interviews, phone calls and resume reviews like a Recruiter, the work tends to be far more long-term project based. You can easily spend up to a year or two years on carefully analyzing trends, costs, patterns and enrollment metrics before making a recommendation. There is a LOT of vendor management. (Way more than I ever thought possible). There is some employee exposure, but it's usually like Payroll in that you will only hear from someone when something goes wrong. You'll answer claims questions, do some negotiation sometimes and receive thousands of gift baskets at the end of the year by the never ending vendors, brokers, third-party agencies and their lawyers.

Benefits Administrators are there to make sure everything goes as planned and you will offer so much relief to stressed your HR Generalists and Business Partners. When we have a Sr Director who needs to take their third leave of absence, but it's a complicated maternity with an adoption element and they live in California but have a time-share in New York, there is nothing that gives us the greatest relief from the calm Benefits Administrator saying "No problem, just send me their email, I'll take care of it."

As a Benefits Administrator, you will likely manage the health insurance policies, but also the short and long term disability policies. You'll become an expert in pre-tax law and your friends and family will call you for advice. You will become an expert in retirement, 401k, financial planning, leave of absence laws like FMLA, FLA and ADA while mastering the ability to automate HRIS reports to Payroll for benefit deductions. You will get stopped about 11 times per day in the hallway, at your desk or in bathroom by people who recognize you because they just want to ask one "quick question".

You get to shine at New Hire Orientations and Open Enrollment - but you'll accept that nobody really appreciates all of the work that you did behind the scenes. That you sat and met with 19 different vendors, negotiated with 4 of them, had 11 5-hour meetings with legal and third-party brokers, all to make sure you can offer a new PPO plan and Pet Insurance, and you'll likely only hear "oh wow...but that's SO EXPENSIVE!" and you'll just sigh and smile and realize you know how much you worked.

Benefit Specialists become Benefit Administrators who can become Benefit Managers. The highest I went was a Sr Benefit Administrator and it seemed like my Manager was just in meetings all day as we negotiated rates, terms and policies of health, disability and retirement insurance. The work was varied enough to always be interesting. One day would be spent trying to find out why an employees claim was denied after their third submission and another would be a barrage of 11 employees all needing the most up to date maternity leave of absence policy while a stressed HRBP is pinging you for an update to the 401k policy because the new VP of Sales is insisting what he was told is not what is in the plan documents.

Generally speaking, I've found that most companies do combine Benefits and Compensation at the Director or Sr Director level, so if you are interested in really climbing high, you should also think about getting Compensation exposure, but one thing is for certain - Benefits is a fairly compensated field with a lot of opportunity!

So if you are interested in HR, but aren't sure where to start exactly - think about Benefits!

Here's a few quick job descriptions to review and I'm happy to connect you with Benefit professionals in my network!

Benefits Specialist

Benefits Manager

Sr Benefits Analyst

Total Rewards Specialist (Comp and Benefits)

Leave of Absence Specialist

Let me know if you have any questions and remember to visit www.BrokenMajor.com for more information or to give a suggestion of what I should cover next!

Daniel