Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a personnel specialist and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A personnel specialist has the primary role of providing detailed and accurate consultation on policies and regulations that pertain to human resource programs of an organization whether routine or complex activities. He or she gets to perform related human resource activities that revolve around employees? benefits and compensation plans and their general well-being.
Besides that major role, he/she will also undertake the following roles; advice appropriately on ways to improve employee workforce output, develop and maintain data and information for all human resource activities, ensure that all employees are paid in accordance with the company's and government policies, handling and resolving any human resource conflicts that might arise and offering advice on highly sensitive and complex human resource issues.
Core Skills Required to be a Personnel Specialist
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A personnel specialist should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Public Speaking:
Public Speaking though closely related to presenting differs in that it is the process of performing a speech before a live audience with the purpose of informing, persuading or entertaining.
A Personnel Specialist must be equipped with good public speaking skills to be able to address an audience through presentations or talks to drive the point home and create a reputable record.
Judgment Skills:
Judgment is the ability to make a decision or form an opinion wisely especially in matters affecting action, good sense and discretion.
A Personnel Specialist must be a person of good judgment with the ability to make the right decision at the right time and for right reasons especially in prioritizing the work correctly to focus on a few important things and ensure excellent results are delivered.
Knowledge of Job:
Knowledge of Job is essential to every employee who needs to have a clear understanding of how their jobs fit into the overall organization to eliminate carelessness and laxity.
A Personnel Specialist must be able to evaluate this criterion when selecting an employee and know the common descriptions of a person with either right or inadequate knowledge of the job early enough to either keep them or let them go.
Work Attitude:
Work Attitude is one's feelings towards and beliefs about one's job and their behavior that can tell how it feels to be there.
A Personnel Specialist ought to encourage his workers and provide all the requirements for the workplace to ensure a positive attitude is maintained by the employees that can help them get a promotion, succeed on projects, meet goals and enjoy the job more.
Assertiveness:
Assertiveness is the inclination to stand up for your rights or other people's rights in a calm and concrete way without being aggressive or accepting a wrong.
A Personnel Specialist must be self-assured and confident to master the skills to put his points across without upsetting others or becoming angry and allowing the employees to do the same while complying with the company's policies and procedures.
Emotion Management:
Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.
A Personnel Specialist must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.
Consistency and Reliability:
Consistency and Reliability are the ability to be trusted to do what you do best all the time with or without supervision and without failure to produce results.
A Personnel Specialist is liable to maintain a high level of consistency and reliability by engaging with employees and treating them with respect deserved which produces excellent results in various kinds of reliability coefficients.
Using Common Sense:
Using Common Sense is the ability to see what is missing in a situation or a project and supplying it without necessarily being assigned or asked to do it.
A Personnel Specialist needs to creatively train his employees always to see the missing element that is typically crucial in any workplace or project and take the opportunity to do business out of it.
Business Etiquette:
Business Etiquette is a basic framework of rules set by companies to ensure and allow you to understand the way you should conduct yourself in the professional world.
A Personnel Specialist must establish the tone for proper behavior in the workplace by making sure all the distinct boundaries are laid out for everyone to follow and understand the implications of defaulting.
Entrepreneurial Thinking:
Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.
A Personnel Specialist should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.
Hard Skills Required to be a Personnel Specialist
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A personnel specialist should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.