– You want to give yourself the edge as a human resources professional, but which skills actually matter? Which ones will land you that career-defining job or promotion? Today, I'm going to
tell you the five skills for human resource professionals
that are in high demand that you need to get on your resume. As a human resources professional
myself, I am here to give you the most up-to-date
and actionable career and job search advice. So make sure you subscribe to
this channel and hit the bell to get a new video on Thursdays. The five skills I'm going to
tell you today are the keywords that employers look for on your resume. And I have gotten hundreds of HR and people professionals jobs
by helping them to up skill and revamp their resumes
with these skills.
And make sure you stay
till number five because that is the top skill I've
seen if you take a few classes to build it, makes all the
difference in getting the job or a promotion. So let's first discuss
how do you build skills for an HR career? One way is to get involved with anything around employee engagement,
community building, training, hiring, firing,
performance management, anything people related. Even if your role isn't just straight up Human Resources role, get exposed to those different processes in any way possible. Second is to skill up
using courses and books. Certifications are a great
way to learn new skills and have something to
legitimize your expertise to employers, but you need to
get the right certification. Have you ever noticed that
so many HR professionals on LinkedIn say SHRM-CP or
SHRM-SCP in their profile? Well, that's because employers
look for SHRM certifications and trust those the most.
I've known the folks at SHRM for years and they were gracious
enough to sponsor this video, but sponsorship or not, they're one of the most
highly respected HR companies in this industry and that's a fact. SHRM has their main certifications and they also offer specialty
credentials available for many of these in demand skills. These credentials are a
great way to show your area of expertise along with your
dedication to the profession and can be a stepping stone
to the larger certification. I'll link a whole page of
all the specially credentials in the description, so you
can peruse them yourself. Here are the top skills to learn. Skill number one, talent acquisition. I know what you may be thinking. I'm not a recruiter. I'm more of a generalist, but recruiting and talent acquisition skills
are still super useful. And here's why. One reason is to keep costs
low, companies sometimes like to hire someone who is a recruiter/human
resources professional hybrid. Essentially, someone who
can full-stack hire people and engage with them all the way through their entire employee lifecycle.
Having recruiting skills
along with the other skills, I will discuss in this video
will enable you to beat out all those other talented
folks for these jobs and second, your career
might hit a bit of a ceiling if you don't get TA experience. If you've only ever touched
the other HR disciplines and they're looking to
promote someone to oversee all functions of HR, you
better know your stuff when it comes to recruiting. Talent acquisition
skills include sourcing, building a recruiting
process, talent evaluation, scorecards, applicant tracking systems, offer generation and negotiation. If these areas sound unfamiliar,
then study up my friend. To build the skill, recruit
for any organization you're a part of, even if
you're recruiting volunteers for a charity event.
Find any way to touch
some of these skills, but there are more specific
hard skills, like sourcing and offer generation that are highly attractive to employers. So either build that
skill or show employers that you have a strong grasp by enrolling in SHRM's talent acquisition
specialty credentials, which I will link in the description. Skill number two, total rewards. The fact of the matter
is if you are an HR, you will be expected to
have an understanding of benefits and compensation and the other incentives
provided to employees. There is so much to learn
here and often it is easiest to learn this on the job. But one way to go about it is to study what your company does. What do they use to provide benefits? What HRIS or HR information
system do they use? What else do they offer? Like tuition embarrassment
or other benefits. Start asking questions. Know what a PEO is before walking into your next job interview. SHRM is of course a total
hub for this information. There are tons of resources there, including their foundations
of compensation program, which will break it down for you.
I'll make sure to link more
information on that program in the comments and in the description. Skill number three,
immigration and employment law. If they hire anyone who
needs Visa sponsorship or higher in multiple
states or heck, just hiring in one state is so darn confusing. They will want you to
spearhead the H1B process and protect the company for
making any terrible miss steps when it comes to employment law. Now, you don't need a law
degree and the good news is that you will work with
lawyers who specialize in this, so it's a little less
intense than it sounds, but being informed,
knowing the right next step for any legal situation that
comes up is highly valued in any HR professional.
I would seriously advise on a
full-on specialty credential for this one. SHRM has one focused on
us employment immigration and then another one
for California HR law. So dive into those if they
make sense for your situation. Now, the next two skills
are so darn crucial and I personally beat
someone out for an HR job because the employer said
that I had skilled number five and they didn't. One thing you might be noticing is that all these are hard skills. When HR requires a lot of soft skills, such as strong leadership
and communication skills, hard skills will give
you a strong foundation and a killer resume and soft
skills will take your career to new heights. So make sure to check out
SHRM's leadership workshops where they are crafted
specifically for HR professionals to advance their careers
with well-rounded approach.
I'll linked more information
about that program in the comments and in the description. Skill number four, employee relations. Employee relations is everything
from being the intermediary between employees and
managers, to creating policies around employee issues
like fair compensation, useful benefits, proper work-life balance, reasonable working hours and others. It's all about being the
peacekeeper and coaching others through complex situations. The first step here is to
start reading company policies and get familiar and
consider why certain choices were made when writing
these different policies. Though, I'm warning you, do
not read these late at night because you may start to get drowsy. But these policies have an
incredible amount of work that go into them. And then if you are not able to get direct HR mediation
experience, look for other areas in your work or life where
you can act as a mediator and a coach and look to
flex those skills more. There is an engaging course
called workplace coaching and mentoring where you'll
learn coaching techniques designed to effectively increase leader in organizational performance. If you can talk eloquently on that topic, they are going to go, dang,
this person is stra-te-gic.
I will link more information
about that course again, it's on SHRM in the comments
and in the description. Skill number five, people analytics. Executives want to see numbers. People analytics is so crucial. It's how you collect
data on your workforce and then use that to
inform major decisions and programs, such as can tell me how much of your employee turnover last
year was regrettable loss? How far diverse candidates get
in your recruitment pipeline? If your internal promotions has
increased since implementing that leadership training two years ago, using HRIS and performance
management systems to unearth this data will be crucial.
Without data, you're just
another chump with a hunch. I personally learned people analytics from my organizational
psychology master's program and that was very statistics
heavy, but you don't have to enroll in a masters
program to learn this stuff and surprise surprise, SHRM does have a people
analytics specialty credential that I highly recommend you
get and that can really help you take your career to the next level.
I will provide all of these
SHRM links in the comments and the description, so that
you can make sure to utilize all of their excellent resources. I'll also link a free download of how to update your LinkedIn profile, which is a full checklist
of exactly what to do because once you build these great skills and certifications, you better get that on your LinkedIn profile. Make sure you like this video
and subscribe to this channel. You've got this, wi-fi high five!.