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The Human Resource Consultant role is your first step into the HR world proper, it's often where Assistant HR Consultants head too after learning the ropes. In this role you won’t be leading major change projects across the organization, what you will be doing is lending your knowledge and ability to a division or business area of the organization. You’ll be involved in a variety of HR topics, such as meeting managers to discuss performance issues, assisting managers and employees with policy-related questions and interpretation, essentially for your business area you are the first port of call – trust me, you will be on speed dial.

Job Description (SAMPLE)

Title: Human Resource Consultant
Division: Human Resources
Reports to: Manager HR Consultancy Services

Position Summary

The Human Resources Consultant is responsible for providing HR advice and support to a portfolio of clients within the organization. This role will also contribute to policy development, workforce planning and various human resource projects as they arise.

Duties & Responsibilities

1. Provide operation advice to managers and staff in relation to employment contracts, terms of employment and the interpretation of agreements, awards, and policies.

2. Contribute to the development, review and maintenance of human resource policies, practices and procedures.

3. Manage human resource cases including disciplinary matters, health and safety, and performance appraisals.

4. Assist in the development and interpretation of human resource data, to assist business units with workforce planning and operational matters.

5. Assist business units with recruitment and selection processes, including creating and updating job descriptions, and providing accurate and timely advice on throughout the phases of recruitment and selection.

6. Actively participate in operational HR planning, including assisting in consultation processes with internal stakeholders.

Selection Criteria

Often the duties and responsibilities will be followed by key selection criteria, I haven’t included these as this area will differ across countries and industries – and indeed the size of the organization will impact on the selection criteria. However they will be tied back to the duties & responsibilities.

Qualifications/Knowledge

Previous experience within a Human Resources team, and/or relevant qualifications would be an advantage.

By Brendan Lys

Operating at the intersection of Human Resources and Data Science, I leverage extensive specialist experience within Human Resources, with the methodologies and approaches of Data Science. This focus on the discovery of actionable insights from data, has been applied to areas such as: remuneration & benefits, workforce planning, recruitment, health & safety, diversity, and training. But what does the application of data science to HR challenges and opportunities actually look like. Within an HR framework the data we work with typically comes directly from our HRMIS, an advantage of using data science methodologies is that we can bring in additional data either held within the organization or from external sources - data which is out of reach from a pure HR analytics approach. Consider for example position descriptions, these contain a wealth of data that we typically ignore as its not in a analysis ready format. A side project I'm working on currently (April 2019) is using text mining on job descriptions to provide insights into which job family the position may fit into. The insights of my work have been enjoyed by organizations across a diversity of sectors including: Government (Australia and New Zealand), ASX and NZX listed companies, utilities, not for profit and higher education.