Human Resources in the recent few years has been making quite a lot of waves. With talent management becoming the new age recruiting mantra, the traditional practices of human resources need a fresh outlook and young minds to formulate strategies that will help not only employers but also employees.

Apart from the fresh perspective young minds brought to the table, they possessed qualifications, skills and credentials that made them stand apart from their peers. So what are those qualifications that will ensure a job in HR industry.

HR Qualifications and HR Professionals

If you are serious about your career as an HR professional, then you need to understand that –

1. You need to have bachelor’s degree
2. Some work experience
3. And then a master’s degree
4. Certifications

A bachelor’s degree will help you gain entry in HR industry and once you have gained some experience in the field you can go for certifications and master’s degree. Certain certification programs require you to have significant amount of experience in the field before you can apply for the program.

Your bachelor’s degree can have subjects like business administration or human resource management. The best way to escalate the HR career is to finish your graduation, intern with an HR firm, gain certification in HR and then opt for promotion. Learn something new every day and try to include in your HR practices for a successful career.

Apart from degree courses and certifications, it will really help you if you are tech savvy and data driven. The role of HR professional has grown from traditional recruitment and retention to drawing meaningful insights from HR metrics and people analytics. Appropriate tools to figure out most of the HR problems facing the current HR industry.

Why Should You go for Certifications in Human Resources?

Credentials have never harmed anyone and certifications are third party validations from credible credentialing bodies. In fact, certifications measure your knowledge and skills against industry and vendor specific benchmarks to prove to employers that you have the right skillset.

Certifications also prepare you for the real time challenges in the corporate world that you will have to deal with being an HR professional. One of the major challenge that you will face during your HR career will be attracting, recruiting and retaining the top talent in your organizations. With certification you will be updated in your knowledge about how to positively engage and thus retain the top performers in your organization.

HR qualifications generally come handy while entering the profession. As you grow in your career and gain experience and become certified HR Professional, your knowledge and skillset are on the rise. With that comes a rise in your salary package and the chances of you taking up leadership positions also increase.

As HR professionals who are certified as well you will be respected in the industry and you can also contribute to the business strategy that will facilitate organizational growth. Yes, certified professionals command that kind of respect because you are constantly upgrading and updating your knowledge and skillset.

Certified HR professionals with significant amount of experience can also opt for senior leadership positions and if you wish you can also go for specific HR certifications that will certify you as the senior HR professional. Thus opening the gates for you and make you an ideal candidate for the leadership positions either in your organization or in some other company.

Since HR professionals these days are required to be adept in –

1. Talent management
2. Data
3. HR metrics and people analytics
4. Technology

If you have all the above-mentioned qualities along with certifications from the reputed credentialing bodies like HR Certification Institute or HRCI, Society for Human Resources Management or SHRM and Talent Management Institute or TMI then there is no stopping you. Each of these certification bodies offer certifications for HR, you can choose from their list and be ready for a successful career in HR.