HR Manager: 5 good reasons to keep training throughout your career

Whether the role is performed inside a company or at a recruitment firm, the HR Manager job has the advantage of involving a wide and varied set of missions.

It covers recruiting new profiles, talent management, employee evaluation, compensation, and even in-house training. The HR Manager can also weigh in on workplace health, risk prevention, and conflict management.

With all these areas, each richer than the next, it's a job that demands sharp expertise as well as an excellent understanding of the world of work and of business. So it's better to keep training continuously, throughout your career.

In this article, we give you 5 good reasons to convince you of how important ongoing training is for an HR Manager!

1. To stay innovative on recruitment techniques

There was a time when recruitment processes consisted of sorting through paper resumes against criteria handed down by management.

Today, hiring methods have changed a great deal and continue to evolve at lightning speed, with increasingly digital processes: video calls, social networks like LinkedIn, recruitment platforms, and so on.

Suffice it to say you need to master these various tools and be creative in setting up acquisition techniques to attract the best talent.

Beyond the recruitment process itself, it's essential to train yourself on the importance of employer brand and HR marketing. Both refer to the set of brand-image issues tied to a company's HR management and recruitment.

Companies have realized they need to invest in suitable communications in order to attract and retain talent. Because yes, recruitment isn't a one-way street! If HR wants to land a candidate, they have to be persuasive about the company in question by highlighting its values, image, and benefits.

2. To properly support your talent and know how to keep them

Once the recruitment step is done, it's essential to properly support all the talent within the organization. That means good onboarding, a positive social environment, and a sense of well-being at work.

HR teams therefore need to be trained on the best practices that support these three elements. That can include training in management, corporate communications, psychology, conflict management, or training on the importance of well-being at work and the actions to put in place to support it.

When it comes to communication, for example, HR can be trained on behavioral analysis tools such as the 16Personalities test or the DISC test. During annual reviews or when resolving conflicts, these tests let the HR Manager understand how a profile operates and adapt their communication style for a smooth, effective exchange.

3. To raise employees' awareness of cross-cutting topics

Workplace health, absenteeism, risk prevention… these are some of the other areas an HR Manager can be involved in.

So HR has to be trained on techniques for improving working conditions. The goal is to give employees a professional environment that meets their expectations, improve human-capital productivity, and know how to manage stress and motivation across the workforce.

When actions are put in place, you see more productivity, better performance, more fulfilled employees, and a drop in absenteeism.

Finally, regarding risk prevention (falls, musculoskeletal disorders, mental health issues), HR is the front-line contact for putting in place actions that aim to reduce all of these risks. Training is then needed to communicate, raise awareness, and understand the impact of these risks on the company.

4. To know and understand the roles you're hiring for

If HR has an excellent grasp of the various roles they recruit for, they logically become a strategic part of the company.

By understanding each role, the skills required, the most respected qualifications, and the qualities a candidate needs, HR can pinpoint the company's needs and search for the right talent in line with expectations.

To do that, they can train internally on the various roles they recruit for the most. In recruitment firms or agencies, HR teams often handle roles in a specific domain such as construction, retail, or tech.

Here again, it's better to have expertise on the sector through proper training.

5. The perfect example of tech recruitment

Tech is its own world, and it can raise a smile when someone in this space starts speaking "tech." When an HR person tries to recruit for a tech role, they need to know what they're talking about and quickly understand the person across the table.

Full-stack developer, Java developer, data scientist, product manager, lead developer… all of these roles are relatively new and most of them come from Silicon Valley.

Tech recruitment is a sharp-edged field where a lack of knowledge can hurt, because there is a real talent shortage. So to recruit the right person, you have to fight for them, convince them to join the company, and pay them at the level of their expectations.