10 HR Skills that Every HR Professional should Develop

An HR professional should possess efficient HR skills to recruit the best candidates for the job. These are not just limited to HR soft skills such as effective communication but also include learning HR skills with a much deeper understanding of the process of recruiting. The process of recruitment is undergoing radical changes. And, many employers are incorporating the latest technologies to help them with effective recruiting.

Thus, it has become more important than ever for human resource professionals to hone their HR skills to meet the modern recruiting needs of the industry.

Let us, therefore, check the 10 top human resource skills that an HR professional should inculcate. Understanding and imbibing these qualities of an HR can ensure efficient recruitment and build a better bank of HR skills 2021.

1. Performance management

Performance is the backbone of an organization, irrespective of the industry. This is the way a company accomplishes its goals. And performance is the key indicator to the growth, development and future expansion of the company. So, HR professionals should work to design and create an efficient performance management system that helps the employees improve their performance, which, in turn, helps the company grow.

Further, the systems and processes should be simple and seamless enough so that the entire workforce finds them valuable and easy to use. Only then will they be universally accepted within the organization and find true success.

2. Collaboration

Collaboration is an important aspect of teamwork and among the more important human resources skills. It is essentially the readiness to work alongside different people towards a unified objective. More often, HR professionals are misunderstood as being non-collaborative with the business efforts of the organization. That is the reason why the HR department is kept away from many critical business decisions and conversations.

However, overall, HR professionals can be more collaborative with the business objectives of the company. This will help them gel well with the managers and employees and develop good HR strategies which benefit one and all.

3. People analytics

HR professionals should possess good analytical skills to make decisions that favour the organization. But, much more than analytics and metrics, they should possess good people analytical skills. People analytics play an important role in recruitment and is the key human resource skill every HR professional should possess. People analytics helps make great analytical hiring decisions that help the company and the workforce. It should be widely incorporated into the business if employers are looking to drive better returns on their investments. This approach is better than the traditional approach to recruiting, which relied more on gut feeling than analytics.

4. Curiosity

Technology can be enhanced and it will transform with time. But what holds most significance is the ability of the human mind to learn and develop their core skills. And one can only learn to develop new skills if they are curious enough to embrace the new opportunities. Curiosity is one of the important skills required for HR professionals.

After all, curiosity allows them to be creative and conjure up ideas that may not only help with recruitment but also help engage the existing employees with the organization. Curiosity is considered to be a positive characteristic, which focuses the attention on winning.

5. Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence has invaded the recruitment space aggressively in recent years. Thus, HR professionals must learn to use AI effectively to bring more efficiency to your recruitment efforts. The reason AI has become more prominent is that employers today seek more efficiency in recurring without expanding their Hr workforce. This has compelled the HR professionals to increase their efficiency to deliver the desired results.

Additionally, this has necessitated the need for technologies, such as AI, which add more efficiency and seamlessness to the recruitment process. AI is greatly effective in screening candidates, which is the most time consuming and the most arduous part of recruiting. So, using AI is an important HR skill that every HR professional should develop.

6. Executive presence

What is executive presence? Well, it essentially means possessing good storytelling and communication skills to market and sell your product to even the most sceptical person of the lot. Executive presence is among the important HR skills that every HR professional should possess.

After all, knowing how to communicate effectively and weave your words is what helps you with interviewing and recruiting the best candidates for the job. The HR should be able enough to persuade the least interested but high on talent passive candidates to join the company.

7. Consulting

HR professionals should also possess the skills of a good consultant. A consultant is not just a random person who provides advice or relevant matters. They are, in fact, expert professionals who hold extensive knowledge about the domain and possess the ability to provide effective insights about the respective domain. They should possess expertise in their relevant field to become good consultants. That’s why consulting is an important HR soft skill that every HR professional should possess.

8. Risk-taking

Risk-taking is another important HR skill. You should take planned and measured risks while recognizing opportunities, manage risks comfortably, and you should possess the insights to shut a system that is no longer producing any favourable results. Stopping or shutting down processes and projects that are not showing favourable results while recruiting, is a very crucial attribute that every HR professional should process.

This will help you initiate some innovative changes in the process rather than pushing through with the same old processes and expecting a different result.

9. Systems thinking

HR professionals should ensure that all the systems of the organization fit together to ensure a seamless recruitment process. For this, the HR professional needs to first understand the workings of the organization. Every organization has a different way of managing day to day operations. This information is crucial and proves effective during, planning, recruitment, onboarding and future learning and development of employees.

10. Wellness and wellbeing

Wellness and wellbeing of the workforce are important to generate great performance out of the workforce. This is the reason why wellness and wellbeing are an integral aspect of performance management. HR professionals should ensure that they create a right work environment that boosts engagement, efficiency and productivity among the employees. This will ultimately lead to better growth.

HR skills are important to ensure a robust and functional hiring system. Employers have become more demanding, at the same time, the job market has become very competitive. In such a scenario, such skills can ensure better recruitment.