10 Important skills for HR professionals
9 de May, 2025
Human resources teams play a fundamental role in organizations. From recruiting new talent, to managing the experience of candidates and employees, to providing professional training, defining remuneration policies and extra-salary benefits, among other responsibilities.
Added to all this is the need for HR professionals to master areas such as sustainability, digital transformation, employee well-being and people analytics.
With such a broad spectrum of activities, human resources professionals need a set of skills that will enable them to succeed in their careers and contribute to organizational success.
Find out what these skills are.
1 – Effective communication
Since human resources managers act as a bridge between the organization and the employee, and need to convey needs and expectations in both directions, communicating well is crucial.
At different times, these professionals are called upon to communicate with other colleagues, but also with candidates (potential employees), leaders, managers or the company’s CEO. In addition, they may have to carry out tasks such as conducting interviews, making presentations and even resolving conflicts.
As such, qualified HR professionals necessarily have strong communication skills: both verbal and written, face-to-face or online, more formal or informal.
2 – Active listening
Listening is a key element in any human interaction. Active listening is what allows us to be truly attentive to what the other person is saying, to pick up on messages that may not be immediately obvious, to maintain an interest in the other person without judgment or prejudice and, ultimately, to strengthen relationships.
Bearing in mind that the job of HR managers is to manage people – to manage their needs, expectations, interests, challenges and singularities – knowing how to listen carefully to them is fundamental.
3 – Business acumen
Human resources professionals should seek to master aspects related to the business. This means knowing the company’s strategy, its main priorities, as well as the characteristics and challenges of the market in which the company operates.
By having this vision, HR managers are better able to align people management strategy with business objectives. Only then can they make more informed decisions, anticipate change and promote global growth.
4 – Emotional intelligence
Professionals in HR departments may have to deal with conflict situations between colleagues, situations of prejudice or discrimination, inappropriate practices on the part of managers or leaders, employee concern or dissatisfaction with the workload, pay, among many others.
When employees raise these issues with human resources managers, they expect empathy and understanding. For this reason, emotional intelligence is a very important characteristic for understanding and managing these interpersonal dynamics and for building a positive working environment.
HR professionals must have a people-centered approach, listen to people and show empathy (have the ability to put themselves in the other person’s shoes).
5 – Adaptability
Business – and people – are constantly evolving. Companies need to adjust to the emergence of new technologies, changes in the market and the socio-economic context, among other factors. At the same time, people also change their professional expectations and goals over time.
In this sense, human resources managers must have the ability to adapt quickly to circumstances – whether they are more or less predictable – and must be active agents in managing change.
6 – Recruitment, selection and onboarding
According to ManpowerGroup’sGlobal Talent Shortage Survey 2025, Portugal is the third most difficult country in the world to attract talent. Finding the right profiles and hiring professionals who meet strategic business objectives is a growing challenge.
As such, recruiting and selecting qualified candidates has emerged as one of the most important skills for HR managers. In practice, this means having solid skills in effective communication, active listening, negotiation and collaboration.
These characteristics must extend to the onboarding process, a period in which it is necessary to ensure that new hires integrate well and feel welcomed and accompanied.
7 – Collaboration and teamwork
Ensuring a good employee experience, from their arrival to their eventual departure, is not just the job of HR departments. Human resources managers necessarily have to work together with other teams, with leaders from other departments and even with external partners.
Thus, the ability to collaborate and work as part of a team is crucial for any human resources professional.
8 – Mastering technology
A large part of an HR professional’s daily work involves using digital platforms for recruitment and selection, performance evaluation, salary processing, benefits allocation and management, among other tasks.
Having a solid grasp of technology is crucial to making human resources work more agile and more efficient.
What’s more, rather than being familiar with existing procedures and platforms, it’s critical that these professionals have the proactivity to evaluate, test and adopt new technologies, such as artificial intelligence or HR automation tools. In this way, they can increase their productivity, optimize processes and improve the experience of candidates and employees.
9 – Critical thinking
HR professionals need to be critical thinkers. They need to be able to design and implement policies that, on the one hand, take into account the company’s business objectives and, on the other, consider the needs of each employee and each team within the organization.
Reconciling these two variables, and translating them into concrete measures, is one of the most important roles of those responsible for human resources: building a people management strategy that supports the company’s overall strategy and at the same time is based on the principle that people are its most important asset.
For this to happen, you need to think strategically about issues such as organizational culture, the company’s purpose and values, workforce management and transformation, the value proposition for employees, among others.
10 – Data analysis
It goes without saying that data helps make decisions. However, according to the study The Power of Analytics in HR (NTT Data, 2023), only 36% of Portuguese companies have an area dedicated to people analytics.
Collecting and analyzing data related to people and the organization helps human resources managers make more informed decisions and therefore optimize their strategies on issues such as: reducing turnover and absenteeism, increasing employee engagement, recruitment costs, satisfaction with the work regime, performance and productivity, the adoption of extra-salary benefits, among others.
HR professionals therefore need to have the skills to analyze this data, work on it and draw conclusions that can be translated into concrete action plans.