If you’re working out what you need to work in HR, you’re probably not coming from a traditional HR background. According to AIHR’s State of HR research, only 18% of HR professionals start their careers in HR as their first or second role, and most learn the job on the go rather than through structured training for human resources.
This might be one of the reasons you want to understand what training is right for your current or future HR role. We unpack these for you in this guide, including whether it’s essential to have an HR degree, what the other alternatives are, and what HR learning can help you develop core and specialist HR competencies to stand out in the job market.
Contents
What you need to work in HR: The short answer
Practical, in-demand HR training
Core HR knowledge to develop
Specialist HR knowledge to develop
The skills gap most HR training misses
HR training requirements by career stage
Keeping your training current: HR recertification credits
Certificate, degree, or certification: Which HR training path is right for you?
FAQ
What you need to work in HR: The short answer
To work in HR, you need four things: foundational knowledge, a way to prove it, practical skills, and a plan to keep them current. How you get each one depends on where you’re starting. Whichever route you take, your training should cover the same core areas:
- Recruitment and onboarding: Writing job descriptions, interviewing candidates, and bringing new hires up to speed.
- Employment law and compliance: Discrimination and harassment rules, leave, wage and hour law, and workplace safety.
- Employee relations: Handling complaints, conflict, and disciplinary processes fairly and confidentially.
- Compensation and benefits: Pay structures, benefits administration, and payroll basics.
- HR technology and data: HR information systems (HRIS), applicant tracking systems (ATS), spreadsheets, and basic people analytics.
You can learn these areas through a practical certificate program, a certification, a degree, or on the job. What changes is how fast you get there and how easily you can show an employer you can do the work.
Practical, in-demand HR training
Practical HR training helps you learn to do the work, such as building an onboarding plan, running a structured interview, or turning HR data into a recommendation your manager can act on. It’s also the fastest way to build the skills HR teams say they’re short on.
AIHR’s Future-Ready HR Skills Report found digital agility and data literacy are the two lowest-rated skills across the HR population.
When you compare HR courses, look at what you’ll do and produce, not just what you’ll watch. Programs built around assignments, roleplays, case studies, and templates you can reuse give you something to show an employer, and they make the first months in a new role less of a leap.
AIHR Certificate Programs
AIHR’s Certificate Programs are built for practical learning. Lessons follow the Tell-Show-Do-Apply method, so you practice through assignments, roleplays, and real-world case studies, and download templates you can use at work. Each program ends with a capstone project that puts you in a realistic scenario, and you earn your certificate by passing the capstone exam.
Programs take 25 to 45 hours, are 100% online and self-paced, and include 12 months of access. They’re taught by 45+ HR practitioners and cost $1,125 each, or $1,850 a year for all 16+ with Full Academy Access. If you’re starting out, the HR Coordinator or HR Generalist Certificate Program covers the day-to-day work.
If you already work in HR, programs like People Analytics, Digital HR 2.0, Artificial Intelligence for HR, and HR Business Partner 2.0 build the data, digital, and strategic skills employers are looking for.
Every program also earns recertification credits. AIHR is recognized by SHRM to offer professional development credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP recertification activities, so the same program that builds a new skill helps keep a credential active.
eCornell certificates
eCornell offers online HR certificates developed by faculty from Cornell University’s ILR School. Its Human Resources Essentials certificate takes about three months and costs $3,750, and most of its HR certificates cost $3,750 to $3,900.
What to consider: eCornell brings the weight of a university name, which can help if that matters to the employers you’re targeting. If your priority is practical skills you can apply quickly, weigh the time and cost against shorter, self-paced programs that take 25 to 45 hours.
Effective HR training starts with identifying the right skills to develop and choosing learning opportunities to help you apply them. Invest in continuous learning to stay current, grow your career, and make a meaningful impact.
With AIHR’s Full Academy Access, you’ll be able to:
âś… Build a solid HR foundation in core areas like recruitment, employee relations, and HR operations
âś… Develop strategic HR expertise to align people initiatives with business priorities, and advise stakeholders
âś… Learn in-demand skills in people analytics, digital HR, and AI to improve processes and support better decisions
âś… Apply what you learn via practical assignments, real-world case studies, and ready-to-use HR tools and templates
🚀 Curious about learning with AIHR? Explore the Demo Portal to preview lessons and discover learning resources.
HR certifications
An HR certification helps you prove what you know, and you don’t always need experience to qualify. The SHRM-CP and HRCI’s aPHR are both open to people without HR experience. The PHR and SHRM-SCP require professional HR experience, so they usually come later in your career.
The Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP are behavioral, competency-based credentials recognized across the US. The HR Certification Institute’s (HRCI) PHR and SPHR certifications lean more toward the technical side, testing your grasp of employment law, compliance, and HR operations.
Between them, they cover most of what employers mean when they ask for someone “HR certified.” Our guide to becoming HR certified walks through eligibility for both.
Both are exams. They test what you know, but they aren’t designed to teach you how to apply it at work, so you still need to build that skill somewhere. That’s why it pays to pair a certification with the practical training covered above. Our roundup of the best HR certifications compares options by career stage if you’re not sure where to start.
Formal education
While a handful of entry-level HR roles will take you on with administrative experience alone, most employers still ask for a bachelor’s degree, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counts human resources, business, and communications among the relevant fields. An HR degree gets you to the fundamentals fastest. A business or psychology degree gets you there too, just by a different route, picking up the commercial thinking or people-reading skills the job also demands.
If you want to test the field before committing to four years, an associate degree or diploma can get you into entry-level roles such as HR assistant or coordinator faster. For management and director-level roles, a master’s degree in HR, organizational leadership, or an MBA becomes more common, mostly because those roles need business fluency an undergraduate program doesn’t always build. Our guide to HR job requirements breaks down what employers expect at each level.
Do you need a degree to work in HR?
Not always. Many entry-level roles, such as HR Assistant or HR Coordinator, will also consider administrative or customer-facing experience instead of a degree. A degree gets harder to skip as you move toward HR Manager and HR Director roles, so check what the job postings you want actually ask for. Our guide to degrees for Human Resources covers which majors employers favor.
None of this is the whole story, though a degree gives you the theory, and what you do with it next, through applied skill-building and certification, turns that theory into a job you’re actually ready to do.
Core HR knowledge to develop
Whatever path you take, a degree, an HR certification, or an HR certificate program, you need broad capability across the core competencies every HR role now requires. AIHR’s T-Shaped HR Competency Model, now in its fourth iteration and shaped by AIHR’s global HR community across 140+ countries, outlines six competencies: Business Acumen, Data Literacy, Digital Agility, AI Fluency, People Advocacy, and Execution Excellence.
Business Acumen connects your work to how the organization creates value, Data Literacy turns people data into decisions, Digital Agility and AI Fluency keep you current as HR technology changes, People Advocacy keeps the human side of the job central, and Execution Excellence, the personal effectiveness to follow through consistently, is what turns the other five from knowledge you hold into practice you actually apply.
Specialist HR knowledge to develop
Core competencies alone aren’t enough. You also need depth on the vertical bar of the T, and that covers two things. The first is specialist expertise in at least one HR domain, whether that’s talent acquisition, compensation and benefits, or HR Generalist work covering a bit of everything.
The second is leadership competencies, such as change leadership and building credibility and trust, which matter once you start managing people.
A Talent Acquisition Specialist without data literacy struggles to turn a hiring plan into a business case a CFO will approve. Someone with strong business acumen and AI fluency but no functional depth can talk strategy convincingly without being able to execute it. Either way, you’re missing half of what the role actually needs.
The skills gap most HR training misses
Even HR professionals with real depth on the vertical bar often find themselves short on the horizontal one, the core competencies that determine how far that specialty goes. AIHR’s Future-Ready HR Skills Report, based on research with 961 HR teams and 13,665 HR professionals, found that only 50% of HR teams believe they have the right skills to deliver the impact the business expects of them.
Three capabilities consistently fall short: digital agility is the lowest-rated skill across the population, data literacy ranks second-lowest, and business acumen shows uneven growth even among experienced professionals. All three are core competencies in the T-Shaped model, and every strategic HR role depends on them.
Generic upskilling doesn’t hold up against the complexity of real HR work. Off-the-shelf e-learning explains concepts but skips the complexity, and seniority-based development assumes skills grow with tenure, even though the data show they don’t.
AIHR’s certificate programs take a different approach. The T-Shaped HR Competency Model shapes every program, so each one pairs specialist depth, such as strategic talent acquisition or organizational development. This ensures that what you learn aligns directly with the work you actually do.
HR training requirements by career stage
What you need to work in HR changes as you move up. Use the stage you’re at now to choose your next step, not the one after it.
Entry level: HR Assistant or HR Coordinator
Focus on HR fundamentals: onboarding, employee records, HR systems, and basic employment law. A bachelor’s degree helps but isn’t always required at this stage. AIHR’s HR Coordinator Certificate Program covers the day-to-day operations these roles run on, and the aPHR or SHRM-CP can strengthen a thin résumé.
Mid-career: HR Generalist or HR Specialist
This is where breadth or depth starts to matter. Generalists need a working grasp of every core HR area, while specialists go deep in one, such as talent acquisition or compensation and benefits. The HR Generalist Certificate Program or a domain-specific program builds that range, and the PHR or SHRM-CP can validate it.
Senior: HR Manager, HRBP, or HR Director
Senior roles shift from running processes to shaping strategy, so business acumen and data literacy carry more weight. Programs like HR Business Partner 2.0 (https://www.aihr.com/courses/hr-business-partner-certificate/) or the HR Manager Certificate Program build the strategic side. A master’s degree or MBA is more common at this level, as is the SHRM-SCP or SPHR.
Keeping your training current: HR recertification credits
Earning a certification is a milestone, not the finish line. SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP holders need 60 PDCs every three years, or they must retake the exam. HRCI certifications also run on a three-year cycle. The PHR, for example, requires 60 recertification credits.
That’s a good reason to choose training that does double duty. AIHR is recognized by SHRM to offer PDCs for SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP recertification activities, and its programs are also eligible for recertification credits with HRCI, HRPA, CPHR, and ATD.
Additionally, CIPD members can record AIHR programs as verified CPD. The same certificate program that builds a new skill also helps keep your credential active. See how many credits each program earns on AIHR’s accredited HR training page.
Certificate, degree, or certification: Which HR training path is right for you?
Here’s a quick breakdown to help you decide which route is right for you:
Path | Duration | Experience needed | Best for | Limitations |
HR degree | Two to four years, covering HR theory, business fundamentals, and often, a research component | None | Starting from scratch, or a long-term move into people leadership | Too slow if you already have work experience and need to close a specific skills gap fast |
HR certification exam | Two to four months of study | None for the aPHR or SHRM-CP; required for the PHR, SPHR, and SHRM-SCP | Proving knowledge you already have; shows employers it’s been independently tested | Tests what you know rather than teaching you anything new, so it works best after you’ve built the skill elsewhere |
HR certificate program | 25 to 45 hours of self-paced content | None | Building applied expertise in one HR domain while strengthening core competencies like data literacy and business acumen | Doesn’t confer a formal degree credential, since the focus is on practical skills you can apply on the job immediately, not academic theory |
Read our guide to HR qualifications for a fuller comparison. In practice, most HR careers combine more than one path, so start with an HR degree or HR certificate program for the foundation.
Add a SHRM or HRCI certification when it fits your stage: the aPHR or SHRM-CP early on, the PHR or SPHR once you have the experience. Then, continue your education by taking HR certificate programs as your role expands. Treat the three as complementary HR learning you pick up in the order your career needs them.
Next steps
Build your HR training plan throughout your career, combining foundational knowledge, a professional credential, and targeted skill development. Start by identifying what your current role demands and where you’d like to go next. Choose one skill to strengthen, then find training that lets you apply it to a real workplace challenge.
AIHR research found only half of surveyed HR teams believed they had the skills to deliver impact. AIHR’s Certificate Programs focus on practical skills you can apply at work, and complement the SHRM or HRCI credential you already hold or plan to earn. Your next step should be to choose program that can close the skills gap you’ve identified.
FAQ
Most HR roles call for practical training in core and specialist competencies, formal education (typically a bachelor’s degree), and often a professional HR certification such as SHRM-CP or HRCI’s PHR. Core skills include business acumen, data literacy, digital agility, AI fluency, people advocacy, and execution excellence. Specialist skills depend on your HR domain, such as talent acquisition, compensation and benefits, or HR generalist work. A certificate program lets you build both at once, without committing to a full degree.
The same combination: a certificate program or relevant degree for foundational knowledge, a recognized certification like SHRM-CP or PHR to validate it, and ongoing skill-building in your specialist domain and the core competencies around it as your role grows.
The best course to study for HR is one that teaches the work your target role actually involves. If you’re new to the field, a foundational certificate program like AIHR’s HR Coordinator or HR Generalist Certificate Program covers onboarding, employee records, HR systems, and employment law basics, and anyone can start right away. If you already work in HR, a specialist program such as People Analytics or HR Business Partner 2.0 builds the strategic skills senior roles call for. Choose a course with assignments and case studies, not just videos, so you finish with work you can show.
At entry level, you need HR fundamentals, basic employment law, and comfort with HR software, plus strong communication and discretion with confidential information. A certificate program, certification, or degree helps you prove those skills, and which one matters most depends on the roles you apply for. Our guide on how to get into HR covers the transferable skills that count most.
If it’s built around applied skills rather than test prep, yes. It’s what turns theoretical knowledge into the job-ready competence employers are actually screening for.
SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP holders need 60 PDCs every three years. HRCI certifications also renew every three years, and the PHR requires 60 recertification credits. AIHR certificate programs count toward both.
