How to write it
Say who you support, in numbers
"HR Manager" tells a reader nothing about scale. Six hundred employees across four sites is a different job from sixty in one office, and the population is the fastest way to communicate which you've done.
Add the structure: how many advisers report to you, how many managers you partner, whether it's multi-site or multi-country. Multi-jurisdiction experience in particular is worth stating explicitly, because it's hard to acquire and often required.
Turnover is your headline metric
HR's contribution is often described as unmeasurable, which isn't true — retention is measured everywhere, it's expensive, and it responds to good people management. If you have moved it, that's your strongest line.
"Reduced voluntary turnover from 26% to 12% by redesigning induction, pay bands and the progression framework" works because it names the mechanisms. Turnover falling on its own is a market condition; turnover falling because of three specific interventions is your work.
- Voluntary turnover, before and after
- Time-to-hire, and hires made per year
- Agency or recruitment spend reduced
- Absence rate, before and after
- Engagement score movement, with the survey named
- ER case volume, and outcomes
Employee relations is where the risk lives — quantify it
Grievances, disciplinaries, capability processes, restructures and TUPE transfers are the parts of HR that carry legal and financial exposure. A manager who has handled them competently is protecting the organisation from real money.
Give the volume and the outcome without any identifying detail: "40+ formal ER cases" and "no successful tribunal claims" across two restructures and a 90-person transfer. That combination is a strong, checkable, entirely confidential claim.
Recruitment: cost as well as speed
Time-to-hire is the standard metric and it's incomplete. The number that gets a finance director's attention is agency spend removed by building direct sourcing, and it's frequently large.
"Cut time-to-hire from 61 days to 29 and agency spend by £340k/year" makes both arguments at once. If you built the capability rather than just managing the process, say that — it's a project, not a duty.
Name the HRIS and the jurisdiction
Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, BambooHR, Personio, ADP — HR postings screen on these because migrating between them is painful and knowing one is worth real money. Say which, and say if you implemented rather than merely used it.
Employment law is jurisdiction-bound, so state yours. UK employment law, TUPE, US multi-state compliance, FMLA, GDPR-compliant people data handling — a recruiter is screening for the framework their organisation operates under, and generic "employment law knowledge" doesn't match.