For work reasons, I have opportunities to interact with HR analysts everyday. I am always curious what skills one would need to become an HR analyst.
Below is an HR Analyst job summary from SHRM.org. Other names for HR Analyst include People Analytics Analyst, Workforce Analytics Specialist, Data Analyst – People Analytics, etc.
The Human Resource (HR) Analyst will collect, compile, and analyze HR data, metrics, and statistics, and apply this data to make recommendations related to recruitment, retention, and legal compliance.
SHRM.org
To become an HR analyst, one needs to have the HR-related domain knowledge. This topic will be explored in another article. Here we will just focus on technical skills, general skills, and education.
Dataset
We searched on indeed.com using keywords “Workforce Analytics”, “HR Analyst”, “People Analytics”, and retrieved 100 related jobs. Seattle, San Francisco, and Atlanta are the top 3 cities that have most demands for HR analysts.
Job descriptions and requirements are cleaned up using some common NLP techniques. Now we are ready to draw some interesting statistics.
Technical Skills
Out of 100 sample jobs, over half of them explicitly requires Excel skills. Surprised? Excel is a simple yet powerful analytics tool, and well suited for many complex tasks. Tableau is also mentioned on many job requirements. SQL and Power BI are commonly required. Python and R are not as popular as others but definitely nice to have.
In the area of Human Capital Management (HCM) systems, WorkDay dominates and appears on job descriptions far more frequently than any other system.
General Skills
It makes sense that communication and report(ing) are the most demanded skills for an HR analyst. General skills of an HR analyst can be broken down to the following categories:
- Business skills: communication, leadership, strategic
- Presentation skills: report, dashboard, visualization, presentation
- Analytical skills: research, statistical (analysis), quantitative (analysis)
Education
A Bachelor degree is commonly required for the job. A Master degree can help in many cases.
If you have a computer science or statistics background, you have a lead in this category. Engineering, Mathematics, and Psychology are also good.
There you have it – the skills you would need to become a HR Analyst. Hope it helps. Feel free to leave comment or question below.