Develop your experience
Work experience can help when looking for a job, but if you don't have any yet, there are lots of things you can do to show you have the right skills and personal qualities for a position.
Unpaid placements or shadowing someone already in the job would be an ideal way of getting experience.
Involved in a sports club or society?
Many of the skills required in HR can be found in roles in student activites. Managing a team, looking after the finances, setting and sticking to budgets are all good ways of demonstrating your abilities.
University careers advisors can help you to refine your CV or application details - working out which skills you have picked up that are relevant to the job.
Make use of those long vacations
Office or administration work (rather than shelf stacking or grape picking) will help you to pick up good skills. If you can get a placement in an HR department then you'll be in the ideal place to observe how the organisation relates to its employees.
If you end up in another department, ask to talk to a representative in HR during or at the end of your time there.
After graduation
You may decide to apply for a graduate training scheme when you leave university. You can either join a generic graduate scheme where you’ll gain experience of a range of different departments that includes HR.
Some programmes are focused specifically on HR. If you choose an HR programme, you may have the opportunity to study a CIPD-approved postgraduate-level qualification.
Sources of information
For more information on graduate schemes, you should start by looking at directories such as Hobsons or Prospects. The hard-copy versions are available at most university careers departments or local libraries and careers offices.
What exactly does HR involve?
You may want to look at the 'What is HR?' section to get more information about the different roles that an HR professional can have.