Hello, I'm currently considerig a career in the human performance/change management area and am just wondering what sort of exit options 5,10 or even 15 years in this area would afford me?I'm thinking senior HR roles but would consulting give me the relevant experience for say HR director or HR manager jobs?

Can anyone offer any insight here?

Specialist HR roles (e.g. reward, compensation & benefits, talent management, HRIS) or project/programme management roles would be more options on exiting HP/change for a career in industry.HR Manager, Director and Business Partner roles generally require several years of generalist HRM experience - the HR profession is still very conservative that way. Therefore, unless you have prior experience in HR or are willing to start again at the bottom it's tough to break in from consulting.

If you're primarily interested in the HR routes afterwards, you'd be better aiming at specific HR consultancies where you can do projects on HR function effectiveness, service delivery etc. These will be easier to transfer into HR than performance management or business change experience which will sideline you into a small niche of roles in HR.Alternatively, if your primary interest is in consulting on change management and performance improvement, then your exit options are better focussed on roles in project management, change implementation and organisational/business design & development teams. In this case, you should aim to pick up some industry knowledge along the way - enough to play the industry specialist when the need calls.