The 6 Skills Every HR Pro Needs on Their Resume
According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, human resource management is one of the fastest-growing occupations today, with employment anticipated to rise 9% from 2014 to 2024, higher than the average across all occupations. This is a strong indicator that the need for human resource management skills is in higher demand than ever before.
As this employment path has developed, so have the obligations and responsibilities of HR professionals, especially if you need to manage a hybrid work force. If you’re considering a job in this burgeoning industry, you’re undoubtedly wondering what crucial human resource management skills you’ll need to succeed. In this article we’ll highlight the six Human Resource skills you should have on your resume.
Skills list:
Human Resources (HR) experts are critical in attracting, training, and retaining the proper personnel for a company. Anyone contemplating a job in human resources should be able to interact with employees and make challenging judgments on a regular basis. Below we’ve compiled a list of the most crucial Human Resource skills you need to succeed.
- 1 – Payroll administration
- 2 – Effective Communication skills
- 3 – Leading with Empathy
- 4 – Software and Technological skills
- 5 – Developing DEI projects (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion projects)
- 6 – SQL
Payroll Administration
Payroll administration includes all tasks associated with paying an organisation’s personnel. It usually entails keeping track of hours worked, leave taken, sick days off, and ensuring that employees are paid correctly. It also includes calculating taxes, Unemployment Funds, and other benefits that employees might have, and ensuring that they are withheld and processed correctly.
A variety of different deductions may be estimated, withheld, and processed as part of this procedure, depending on the company. Additionally, contractor payment processing may come under the same umbrella. The specific activities involved in payroll administration vary depending on the needs of each individual firm or organisation. Some of the most common payroll responsibilities are:
- Collate timesheets on a regular basis
- Determine bonuses and allowances
- Using payroll software, prepare employees’ remuneration by the end of each month
- Schedule bank payments
- Distribute paychecks to employees directly
Effective Communication skills
The skill to communicate effectively is a necessary life skill that can only be improved with practice. It can help any work or commercial transaction that involves more than one person, to be completed properly. Thus, communication entails the transmission or exchange of information by speech, writing, or some other media.
Each person’s communication style is a unique blend of their intrinsic abilities, and effective communication is a crucial skill for Human Resource Professionals. This is especially because they interact with people very often. Whether it’s with team members, company departments or prospective employees, the typical HR role requires a lot of clear and effective communication.
Leading with Empathy
When we are going through difficult circumstances, dealing with burnout, or struggling to find pleasure at work, empathy may be a strong antidote that contributes to great experiences for people and teams. Empathy has very constructive effects in the workplace, and having this skill as a Human Resource professional is worth while practising.
In a recent study by Catalyst, employees were questioned on the influence empathetic leadership had on their work experience. Below are some of the results and areas where employees felt most affected by empathetic leaders.
- Innovation: People who claimed that their leaders were empathetic were more likely to report that they could be innovative.
- Engagement: Only 32% of employees who experienced less empathy from their leaders reported being engaged, compared to 76% who experienced more empathy.
- Retention: When they feel their life circumstances were accepted and valued by their employers, 57% of white women and 62% of women of colour indicated they were unlikely to consider quitting. When they didn’t feel that degree of worth or respect for their living circumstances, however, just 14% of white women and 30% of women of colour stated they were unlikely to contemplate leaving.
- Inclusivity: Only 17% of those with less sympathetic leaders said their workplace was inclusive, compared to 50% of those with more empathetic leaders.
- Work-Life: When employees thought their leaders were more empathic, 86% said they were able to negotiate the demands of their job and life, successfully managing personal, family, and professional duties. This is in comparison to 60%.
As an HR practitioner, you need to practise being empathetic to people from all walks of life and respond to their requests without coming across as offensive, aggressive or undermining the importance of their circumstances.
Software and Technological skills
Technical abilities are important for success in human resources and human resource management. These technical abilities provide you with the confidence you need to perform your HR duties. Learning more about the talents necessary for human resources allows you to determine which skills to hone before including them in your CV.
HR workers should be proficient in a wide range of technological skills. Some are more role-specific, while others are cross-functional. Experience in these areas can help you stand out as a job prospect or employee, so to help you get your resume ready for the next job application, here are some of the technical skills you need to master:
- Human resources software
- Systems for talent management
- Recruitment and onboarding
- Compensation and benefits management interviews
- Scheduling and budgeting
- Employee interactions
- Corporate law (employment, remuneration, dismissal etc.)
Developing DEI projects
DEI is an acronym that stands for diversity, equality, and inclusion. It is defined as any policy or practice that makes individuals from diverse backgrounds feel welcome and ensures they have the assistance they need to succeed to the best of their ability in the workplace.
Diversity:
The presence of variances within a specific context is referred to as diversity. In the workplace, this may include distinctions in colour, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and socioeconomic background.
Equity
The act of ensuring that systems and programs are unbiased, fair, and deliver the best possible outcomes for all individuals is known as equity.
Inclusion
Inclusion is the process of making employees feel like they belong at work. This implies that every employee is at ease and supported by the business when it comes to being their true selves.
HR functions include staffing, talent management, performance management, remuneration, benefits, and data analytics.
Until recently, diversity, equality, and inclusion were considered a part of human resources, with diversity leaders reporting to the head of human resources. However, diversity was mostly absent from the list of HR specialists. As a result, decades of HR professionals have advanced their careers while having little or no official education, training, or experience in DEI. Having DEI skills will promote you to the upper ranks of HR management and a specialist in diversity, equity and inclusion.
SQL
HR used to be associated with binders loaded with many sorts of documentation. Ranging from employment contracts, doctors’ notes, tax certificates and a host of other employee related documentation. Fortunately, nowadays everything is digitised, and paperwork can be accessed and assessed digitally using computers, cloud-based software and internal servers.
IBM created SQL in the early 1970s, and it became commercially accessible in 1979. It is widely regarded as the industry standard relational database management system (RDBMS).
To get data from databases, it employs groups of keywords known as statements. SQL queries the database in a number of ways, using English-like commands. It is used for back-end data storage and processing solutions on websites. SQL, in essence, offers CRUD capabilities for databases. What exactly does CRUD stand for?
- Create,
- Read,
- Update, and
- Delete
Human resource management is a difficult undertaking in large enterprises. Finding information on workers and dealing with employee procedures is difficult without rapid access to the essential data. Using SQL in HR helps to standardise employee data. Finding information about an individual from a given department is no longer a challenge with relational databases, and it is also much simpler to create reports and summary data on pay, holidays, productivity, and targets.
Having SQL as a skill on your resume will secure you a top spot as an HR database specialist. This is not just a worthwhile skill today, but for at least the next decade – unless some magnificent and drastic changes are made – which are quite unlikely.
Conclusion
Without a doubt, successful HR staffing is focused on the company’s long-term objectives. As the speed of change quickens, HR professionals must stay on top of developing trends that can impact not only the workforce but also the organisation’s whole business picture.
