How to Become a Human Resources Specialist With a General Studies Degree (2026)

What Does a Human Resources Specialist Do?

A human resources specialist recruits, screens and interviews job applicants and places the people who get hired into their jobs. That's the core of the work, and in a given week it runs from a first phone screen with a stranger to the paperwork that makes a new employee official. The same specialist may also handle compensation and benefits, training and employee relations, depending on how the employer divides the department.

The hiring side starts before a job is posted. You'll consult with employers to identify hiring needs, which in practice means sitting with a manager and turning a vague sense of being short-staffed into a role with a title and a list of duties. Then you find candidates and interview them about their experience, education and skills. When someone accepts an offer, you run or help with their orientation, so you're the first person a new hire deals with on day one.

The less visible half of the job is records. A human resources specialist keeps employment records and processes paperwork, and that isn't a side task you hand off. Status changes, benefits forms and the file an auditor would ask to see all sit with you. If the interviewing appeals to you and the filing doesn't, know now that the job is both, every week.

Listening and speaking skills are essential, in the handbook's words, because you're in conversation all day and have to connect with people from varied backgrounds. If the orientation and training piece draws you more than the recruiting does, the neighboring job of training and development specialist builds a whole career on it, and the two share an entry degree.

Where Do Human Resources Specialists Work?

Human resources specialists work in office settings for the most part, and the handbook's industry breakdown shows how spread out those offices are. Professional, scientific and technical services and employment services each employ 13 percent of them, more than any other industry, and the rest are scattered across every kind of organization large enough to need someone doing the hiring. That spread helps a general studies graduate, because you can look for the job inside whatever industry you already know something about.

The exception to the desk is recruiting. Recruitment specialists travel to attend job fairs, visit college campuses and meet with applicants, so a recruiting role means days on the road during hiring seasons. Recruiting also changes who you spend the day with, since it's candidates and college career offices instead of colleagues. Ask about travel before you accept, because two human resources specialist postings with the same title can differ a lot on it.

Most specialists work full time during regular business hours, and some work more than 40 hours a week. It's a schedule you can plan a life around, and the useful question for an employer is which weeks of the year run long and why.

How Do You Become a Human Resources Specialist With a General Studies Degree?

You become a human resources specialist with a general studies degree by finishing the bachelor's, which the handbook lists as the typical entry education, and then adding the experience that gets your application past the first screen. The handbook names human resources, business and communications as the usual fields, with a related field as the door a general studies degree walks through. No license or required certification stands between you and the job, since the handbook calls certification usually voluntary, and its quick facts list no work experience and no on-the-job training as entry requirements.

What does stand between you and the job is competition from graduates who spent their whole degree on human resources courses. The handbook's answer is experience, either an internship during college or time as a human resources assistant or customer service representative, both of which it names as routes in. The steps below put those in order. Plan on the degree plus one of them, not the degree by itself.

Is a General Studies Degree Enough to Become a Human Resources Specialist?

Yes, a general studies degree is enough to become a human resources specialist, on one condition. The handbook's entry requirement is a bachelor's degree in human resources, business, communications, or a related field, and the phrase a related field is doing the work for you. A general studies bachelor's clears the degree line. By itself, it doesn't tell an employer that you know anything about hiring, and that gap is the condition.

So build the degree to close it. If your program lets you choose emphasis areas, make business and communications two of them, because those are the fields the handbook names, and use your electives on management and writing. When a hiring manager reads your transcript, they should see the courses a human resources major would have taken, under a different degree name. The ranked general studies bachelor's programs are where to compare your options, and the online bachelor's rankings cover programs you can take at a distance.

Then add experience, because the degree alone won't win the job against people who majored in it. The handbook's two routes are an internship during college and time in a job such as human resources assistant or customer service representative. Certification is the other thing you'll hear about. The handbook says it's usually voluntary, that some employers prefer or require it, and that candidates usually need to meet minimum education and experience requirements first. Ask the employer you want to work for which credential, if any, they care about before you pay for one.

How Much Does a Human Resources Specialist Make in 2026?

A human resources specialist makes a median of $75,940 a year , and most earn between $47,180 to $128,720, the 10th and 90th percentiles, in the May 2025 federal wage survey , which counts 912,430 people in the job. The middle half earn between $58,610 and $99,380, so the median is a midpoint and not an offer.

Pay by state runs from $110,970 in District of Columbia down to $55,010 in Arkansas. The bars below list every state with a published median, highest first, with the number employed there beside each.

Pay for human resources specialists by metro area and by industry, with government against private pay, is in the human resources specialist salary guide.

What Is the Job Outlook for Human Resources Specialists?

The job outlook for human resources specialists is 6 percent growth from 2025 to 2035, which the handbook rates faster than the average for all occupations. That's about 60,100 added jobs over the decade on top of the 939,700 the handbook counted in 2025, and about 73,700 openings a year, on average, across the same period. The handbook's reason is that demand is expected to be strong because organizations will need more of these workers to help meet strategic priorities.

For someone entering now, a projection is a projection, and the year you graduate can look different from a decade's average. What the numbers do say is that the openings exist in volume, 73,700 a year in an occupation of 939,700 people, so you're not chasing a rare job. You're competing for a common one against people who majored in it, which is why the internship and the entry job in the steps above matter more to you than the growth rate does. Read the 6 percent as a sign the field is growing, not as a reason to skip the experience.