Human Resources is a strategic function that is vital to every company’s success. Organizations look for HR managers who are able to back up their skills with tangible impacts, and this must be evident in your resume. Whether the company is struggling with staff recruitment, productivity or retention, your resume must convince them that you will be the one to fix these problems. To ensure that your skills are conveyed in the most effective manner, we have created a list of helpful tips to adhere to when writing your HR resume.
Keep in mind that you are ultimately trying to demonstrate your suitability to be an HR manager. As mentioned earlier, an HR manager is expected to remedy the company’s internal problems, which are unique to the organization. To customize your resume for each company, you must create separate versions for each opening. Even so, there are a few general rules that are important for all HR resumes you write.
Apart from contact information, you only need to include your motivation, achievements and relevant work experience. Identify the key requirements mentioned in the job description, and present your experiences to match these requirements. Include past HR experiences or any other position in which you lead a team, had to delegates tasks, or made long term goals and managed on a macro level. In particular, any management, consultant, business experiences, etc. may be useful.
Focus on what recruiters want to see on your resume. Recruiters don’t want to see you mentioning irrelevant work experience, strange hobbies and … bad grammar.
There are two main formats - chronological and functional. If you have an extensive list of relevant work experience, the chronological format is perfect for you. Use the following order for this format:
If you are an entry-level HR manager or are changing careers, you may find the functional format to be more suitable. The sections go as follows:
This format allows you to list your skills and provide achievements to verify them.
Get creative by adding extra sections if they help you demonstrate your competencies (e.g. Awards, Publications).
Be overly creative with naming those sections. Online scanners look for particular words and may not recognize a section named ‘Relevant Background’. It is better to use a more conventional heading like, ‘Work Experience’.
Use a simple resume template. Stick to a professional looking font such as Arial, Calibri, Verdana or Times New Roman and keep the font size within 9-12 points.
Here are some effective examples of our HR Manager resumes.
A Senior Talent Acquisition Manager resume.
Along with professional work experience, you have probably had your share of sleepless nights and high levels of stress over the years. However, it is difficult to translate all of this work into a strictly formatted and concise resume. To ensure that this is no longer an obstacle in your career search, we have compiled a list of tips that will easily help you fill out our resume template and highlight your most notable achievements.
This is the first thing recruiters will see on your resume. The wording of this section is extremely important, because it has to demonstrate your ability to lead teams, understand company culture and improve productivity.
HR plays a very crucial role as a support function for any organization. Companies would like to see someone who understands the role and will easily be able to adjust to a new environment. As an HR manager or director, you will be working with many unique individuals, and your resume should demonstrate your ability to do so. Not only will you be working with the company’s entry-level employees, you will likely be reporting to a senior executive, such as a Chief HR Officer. As a result, it is recommended that you highlight your years of experience, your ability to engage with employees, and the role you played in improving employee performance in your previous establishments. Keep your summary statement short, not more than 5-6 lines but compelling and engaging. Don’t hesitate to use specific HR jargon, as long as it makes logical sense.
Take a look at some of our great summary examples, and advice on how you can improve yours:
Highly efficient Human Resources Manager with over 9 years of experience, well established in administrative environments that are fast-paced and challenging. Excels in organizational communications and employee training and development. Especially good in managing teams of 15 + recruiters. Versed in organizing all pre-employment training for incoming candidates, as well as performing extensive background checks.
Human Resources Manager with 9 years of experience, good at managing teams and working in challenging environments.
If you are submitting your HR resume online, it will most likely be scanned by an applicant tracking system. An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a robot that scans your resume and looks for necessary keywords, work experience and additional requirements if there are any. However, it is still important to use professional terminology and jargon when sending a resume directly to a recruiter, despite it not being relevant to ATS. Using professional vocabulary will demonstrate that you are familiar with this field.
Include a fair number of HR-related keywords like “employee recruitment”, “employee training”, “performance monitoring”, etc.
Overuse keywords which serve no purpose in your sentences.
In the “Work Experience”, or “Employment history” section, you can use some action words that are popular among scanning software programs.
Use relevant action words, such as: assess, administer, allocate, develop, enhance, facilitate, guide, implement, mentor, motivate, optimize, operate, oversee, plan, prepare, review, showcase, supervise
It is also important that you present your skills in the best wording possible. Here are some examples:
Avoid including vague skills like ‘Employee retention’ or ‘Creating positive culture’.
Use your academic credentials as additional evidence of your achievements and experience. HR Managers are expected to have at least one bachelor’s degree in HR or a related field.
However, if you have additional education (Master’s degree, certificate, etc.), including it into your resume will only strengthen your qualifications and education profile- this will prove your expertise in the area. An MBA HR degree, for example, is increasingly popular.
Drop your technical experience. In today’s companies, every employee is expected to have technical skills.
You will likely be using an HR management software to oversee operations. You are free to include any general technological skills go may have (i.e. Microsoft Office). However, specialist experience working with HR administration, talent management or learning management systems like Workday, UltiPro or ADP, will be an impressive addition to your resume. In addition, avoid writing experience from school, as employers will be uninterested in your early education.
Here are some great examples of job descriptions:
And one more example:
To prove that you brought value to the companies you were a part of, it is extremely important that you quantify your work. As an HR manager applicant, you must show that you are of higher caliber than an average HR assistant. So, it is not enough to say you led a team and improved personnel performance. Instead, you should include the number of employees and the specific ways in which you improved employee performance, and by how much. This rule can be applied to any of your achievements. For example:
Here are some skills necessary to put into your HR Manager Resume.
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employee recruitment |
candidate screening |
employee retention |
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talent development |
human resource administration |
human resource systems |
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conflict management |
workers’ compensation |
performance management |
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compliance |
diversity management |
curriculum development |
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payroll administration |
professional development |
project management |
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talent management |
training and development |
employee benefits |
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talent retention |
leadership |
legal compliance |
33% of teachers leave within the first three years of beginning their careers and 46% leave within the first five. The numbers have been increasing since the late 1980s.
The HR Manager is in charge of developing relationships with staff at all levels, assuring that new recruits integrate effectively into the organization. He develops, implements and manages employee on-boarding and off-boarding process. In order to develop and monitor overall HR strategies and procedures across the organization they should leverage knowledge of the following software:
