The chief HR officer at my news firm is a qualified HR person with certification from SHRM which is one of the most recognized HR certification company in the world. As I sat down with her one day for lunch and asked her about how she got certified I was surprised about how tough it all was for her. ‘Signing up, going through eligibility criteria’s, a set of different course modules and ever updated course content, it was so hard to keep track of just all the learning material, let alone attempting the exam’ she complained. ‘If you had a body where you can just study the books and then attempt the exam in a single platform, how would that change it’? I inquired. That would be heaven was her response.
After returning to my seat that day, I did a basic search for online HR certifications platform, and I found one which was dedicated to HR professionals (www.hracademia.com) and seemed highly professional. After going through their website, I realized this platform was providing online HR certifications to people across the world and its certification process was very very simple to put it mildly. I sent an email to their support staff asking to be connected with someone in the management. Surprisingly, I got a direct email from their Chief Operating Officer Natalie Greeman, who happened to be working out of Long Island City in NY, we got on a direct call and this is the excerpt from our discussion.
Since when HRAcademia has been operating and what’s the concept behind this certification model?
Natalie: HRAcademia officially started providing HR certifications from early 2016, we have been very successful among HR fraternity who do not have time to follow deadlines and attempt exams out of a physical location. Our model focuses on the fact that HR people are busy and getting certified shouldn’t be so difficult when you know that you are very competent. So, people register with us, get access to learning material and can attempt exam within 6 months from the date of their registration.
What type of HR people constitute the largest chunk of your certified professionals?
Natalie: Not surprisingly it turned out these were HR professionals who had experience ranging from 2 to 20 years, which meant that we were right! that there was a need for this kind of certification body, where SHRM and others offer certification purely when you attempt it from one of their approved physical locations.
What were the biggest challenges you faced?
Natalie: The biggest challenge I would say was to make sure that our course content and learning material stays updated, HR globally is changing rapidly and radically, so we make sure that our research stays on top. We also have to ensure that we keep track of changes in the legislation. Another challenge which we faced early on was legitimacy as we still are pretty new, people were a little reluctant in getting certified from us.
Where are the majority of your customers based?
Natalie: Because we are a global online HR certifying platform, the world is our arena, but we get a lot of customers from the west coast in the United States, Asia, Africa and Europe.
What is your edge over other HR certification platforms?
Natalie: As I mentioned, it’s a one stop, one window solution to getting HR certified, register, study, exam and get certified, all from the comfort of your bedroom!
What is the future of HR certifications?
Natalie: I think we have already established that tech is where everything is, those industries who do not adopt to technology fade away, so HRAcademia is the future and I would be really happy the day when I will hear that SHRM and its type of certification providing platforms have completely automated their certifications methods, but we can at least say that we were the first one to do so!
