Joel Rivas

Joel Rivas wasn't just out of school when he went job hunting -- he was laid off from a job as an HR support manager -- but he had been in HR for only two years."I knew I needed more HR experience," he says.

Rivas took a four-month temporary assignment as the sole HR professional at a St. Paul, Minn., manufacturing company that was closing."It was useful and challenging," he says."It was tough, emotionally, as I was a sounding board for a lot of [employees'] angst.It helped me learn how to defuse a situation when an employee is upset and resolve issues quickly."Rivas is now a full-time staffing manager at Command Center, a staffing agency in Hudson, Wis.