Employee interactions, company image, recruitment, policies, salary negotiations, onboarding—you do a lot! You serve as liaison between staff and upper management to help mediate problems, too.
But, if your head is spinning from looking at sample resumes, you might be left wondering what your resume should emphasize and how it should look.
No need to worry: We’ve helped plenty of people in HR polish their resumes to a shine! Use these five Human Resources Manager resume templates and additional resume tips to get started.
Why this resume works
- Trying to land a managerial spot in HR can feel like navigating a minefield since everyone seems to be playing the same cards. But here’s the kicker: you can steal the spotlight by having your human resources manager resume flaunt your victories from past roles.
- Got a moment where you boosted employee satisfaction metrics by 9%? That’s gold—make sure it’s front and center in your resume. And throw in that bit about slashing the hiring process time by maybe, 18%. It’s these highlights that make you stand out from the crowd.
What Matters Most: Your Skill Set & Work Experience
As a human resources manager, you want to show recruiters that you can balance technical prowess with your ability to guide and support employees. Recruiters want to see a blend of hard and soft skills showing that you know when to help and how.
Luckily, when you list hard technical skills, they tend to speak for themselves. Just be specific and spotlight your favorite software tools by name!
Alongside naming the exact programs you use for HR management, make sure you’re very profession-specific with your soft skills. Instead of just saying “communication,” share how you communicate:
9 most popular human resources manager skills
- Interviewing
- Employee Coaching
- Benefits Administration
- Conflict Resolution
- UKG Pro
- HRIS (Workday)
- Paycor
- MS Excel
- Google Suite
Sample human resources manager work experience bullet points
While your skills show what you can do, your work history shows how you put them into practice. Recruiters want to know what you accomplished and how.
You’ll have to back up your claims with quantifiable data, too. This can get tricky while featuring soft skills, but look for ways to go beyond what you did to show the measurable impact it had.
While providing metrics like percentages and improvements in ratings, you also want to exhibit a trend of advancement throughout your experience section.
Here are some sample work experience bullet points:
- Gathered feedback after final interviews, boosting positive reviews on Glassdoor to 4.8/5 stars
- Identified gaps in interview funnel and recommended proactive changes that improved average time-to-hire by 18%
- Led forecasting for yearly full-time and contractor recruitment needs with 27 company executives, increasing team efficiency and elevating employee satisfaction by 14%
- Collected job requirements and posted 53 job descriptions on internal and external sites, acquiring 8 full-time hires within a month
Top 5 Tips for Your Human Resources Manager Resume
- Pick a sleek but friendly template
- It’s always good to look approachable but professional on your HR manager resume. If you’re asking yourself “How much is too much?” remember: Stick with a modern resume template with two colors maximum, and always use clear, readable fonts.
- Measure that impact!
- Still not totally sure how to present your soft skills with good metrics? If you start to feel like you’re just listing random numbers, step back and look for how they tie into your profession. What impact did they have? Did your work improve employee retention? Reduce onboarding time?
- Stay under one page
- Your resume should be one page or less, making it easy for a recruiter to skim your highest points, such as your own chops regarding recruiting or your ability to forecast for full-time hiring needs. Any longer than a page, whatever you included on page two will likely go unread if your resume isn’t simply discarded in favor of a more concise one.
- Don’t forget about your cover letter
- Don’t worry: Not everything you trim away to keep your resume to a single page has to be gone forever! If you had some points that were simply too good to part with, like that time you skyrocketed employee satisfaction rates, they may be useful in your HR cover letter.
- Show project ownership and leadership
- When applying for a managerial role, it’s important to highlight instances when you’ve owned more complex tasks. Mention how you created new hiring plans, optimized workplace practices, and nurtured a supportive work environment.
It’s important for a human resources manager resume to fit each job role you’re applying for. Yes, that means you’ll need to tweak it each time, but it’s not as intense as it sounds. Review each job description for specific skills, keywords, and objectives that you relate to, and reflect those in your resume.
This can be tricky for HR managers. But a good rule of thumb is remembering that you’ve advanced to a managerial role to handle larger, more layered objectives. Since your skills have expanded beyond the more common HR skills, include broader and more technical abilities, like compensation and benefits management or talent management software, than you’d find on an entry-level resume.
You already know to stick with simple colors and user-friendly fonts, but layout is important, too! Decide which resume format is best for you by assessing which of your sections is the strongest. (You’ll probably want to highlight your work experience to show your growth and qualifications as a human resources manager.)
