Human Resources Systems Analyst Coordinator

This is a junior role sitting between an organisation's HR team and the software that HR runs on - usually an HRIS (Human Resources Information System, the central database holding employee records, pay bands, job titles, absence and performance data). You keep that data accurate, run reports for managers and HR advisers, fix or escalate problems people have with the system, and help test and roll out changes to it. The work serves internal customers: HR business partners, payroll, recruitment teams, line managers and sometimes finance.

Starting salary: £24k–£32k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Direct application to a junior HR systems, HR data or 'people…
They usually ask for: A degree is usually expected but the subject rarely matters much

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £24,000–£32,000 to start, though this varies widely by employer, sector and location - London and specialist consultancy roles sit at the higher end, while smaller organisations, charities and some public sector posts sit lower. Pay tends to rise noticeably once you can configure systems or write your own queries rather than only running standard reports.

What you'd actually do

Processing changes in the HR system - new starters, leavers, promotions, salary changes, transfers between departments - and checking the records that other people have entered are correct and complete
Running and building reports: headcount by team, turnover, absence levels, diversity data, pay data for a salary review. This usually means pulling data out of the system and tidying it up in Excel, and increasingly building dashboards in Power BI or similar tools
Answering queries from HR colleagues and managers who are stuck - a manager can't see their team, an absence record has been coded wrongly, a report shows a number that looks implausible - and either fixing it or logging it with the software vendor or IT
Doing data clean-up work: finding duplicate records, employees sitting under the wrong cost centre, missing end dates, and correcting them in bulk

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Testing changes before they go live - when the system is upgraded, a new workflow is added, or a new absence policy is configured, you work through scripted test scenarios and record what breaks
Supporting a project or system rollout: writing simple user guides, running short training sessions for HR colleagues, chasing people to complete data-entry tasks before a deadline
Running recurring cycles that depend on the system - annual performance review rounds, pay review, right-to-work and compliance checks - which means a lot of deadline-driven coordination with HR and payroll

How graduates get in

Direct application to a junior HR systems, HR data or 'people operations' vacancy. This is the most common route - these roles are frequently advertised at entry level and do not require prior HR experience, though some administrative or data experience helps a lot
Internal move from an HR administrator or HR shared services role. Very common: people who already use the system daily and show an aptitude for the data side get pulled into the systems team
A graduate scheme in HR or people. Larger employers in retail, banking, utilities, professional services and the public sector run HR graduate schemes with rotations, and an HR systems or people analytics rotation is often one of them. Less common than finance or general management schemes, so competition is concentrated
Via an IT, business analysis or data route rather than an HR one - some people arrive from a junior business analyst or data analyst job and specialise in HR systems. Perfectly normal, especially where the role is positioned closer to IT

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Temporary or fixed-term contracts, often through recruitment agencies, covering a system implementation or a data migration. These are a realistic way in for recent graduates and frequently convert to permanent roles
Apprenticeships and school-leaver programmes in HR or data exist too, so you may be working alongside colleagues who did not take the degree route

What employers ask for

A degree is usually expected but the subject rarely matters much. Business, HR, management, psychology, economics, maths and information systems all appear; so do unrelated humanities degrees where the applicant can show data skills
Demonstrable Excel ability. This is the single most consistently requested thing - lookups, pivot tables, cleaning messy exports. Some employers test it at interview or with a short exercise
Grade requirements vary a lot. Some employers set a 2:1, many set a 2:2, and smaller organisations or agency-placed contract roles often set none at all and care about experience instead
Any exposure to an HR system is an advantage but is almost never required at entry level - employers expect to train you on their specific platform. Knowing SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle, iTrent or similar by name is a bonus rather than a gate

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Professional qualifications are not needed to start. The CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) qualification is the standard HR credential and some employers will fund Level 3 or Level 5 once you are in post; on the more analytical versions of the role, employers may instead support data or Power BI training
Some roles need basic SQL or an interest in learning it, particularly where you are expected to write your own queries against the HR database rather than use built-in reports

Skills that matter

Spreadsheet and data-handling skill

Most of the actual output - reports, reconciliations, bulk data loads - is produced by manipulating exported data, and the speed and accuracy with which you do this largely defines how useful you are.

Attention to detail under deadline

An incorrect end date or salary figure can feed straight into payroll and mean someone is paid wrongly, so careless work has visible consequences fast.

Data scepticism - noticing when a number looks wrong

Systems happily report nonsense if the underlying records are bad, and part of the job is spotting that a turnover figure is implausible before it reaches a director's slide.

Translating between HR people and technical people

You routinely take a vague request like 'we need to track contractors differently' and turn it into something specific enough for IT or a software vendor to act on, then explain their answer back in plain terms.

Discretion with confidential information

You see salaries, disciplinary records, sickness details and redundancy plans before they are public, and you are usually working under GDPR obligations about who may see what.

Process documentation and patience with repetition

Much of the value you add is writing down how something is done so it can be repeated correctly by others, and chasing people to follow it.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Entry level: HR systems administrator, HR data coordinator or HRIS assistant - focused on data entry, queries and standard reports, with close supervision.
HR Systems Analyst or People Analytics Analyst - you own reporting for a business area, configure parts of the system yourself, and take a role in testing and upgrades. Moving up a level typically takes a couple of years, but this varies widely with employer size and whether a system implementation happens to land while you are there.
A fork in the road. One branch is technical: HRIS specialist, HR systems manager, or implementation consultant working for a software vendor or consultancy rolling the system out for client organisations - this branch often pays better and can involve travel. The other branch is analytical: people analytics, workforce planning, reward analysis.
The HR branch: moving into reward (pay and benefits), HR operations management, or a generalist HR business partner role, usually with CIPD study alongside. The systems grounding is genuinely useful here because so much HR decision-making now runs on data.
Senior destinations include Head of HR Systems or People Analytics, HR Operations Director, or senior consultant roles. Timelines vary enormously and depend far more on moving between employers at the right moments than on time served.

What people get wrong

“It's an HR job, so it's mainly about people - recruitment, wellbeing, handling grievances.”

Most of the week is spent with data, systems and processes rather than with employees. You may never sit in a disciplinary meeting. If you want the people-facing side of HR, a generalist or recruitment route fits better.

“The double title means it's a confused, made-up job.”

Titles in this area are genuinely inconsistent - HRIS Analyst, People Systems Coordinator, HR Data Officer and similar all describe overlapping work. The combined wording usually signals a role that is part analysis and part administrative coordination, which is typical at entry level. Read the duties, not the title.

“You need to be able to code, or have a computer science background.”

Most of these systems are configured through menus and settings rather than programming. Strong spreadsheet skills and logical thinking get you in; SQL or reporting-tool skills are usually picked up on the job and are what move you upward.

“It's a back-office dead end.”

Because every HR decision, pay round and board-level headcount report depends on this data, the role gives unusually early visibility of how an organisation actually works - and HRIS implementation consultancy is a well-paid specialism that many people move into.

Where this varies

The role varies a great deal depending on where it sits. In a large organisation with a dedicated HR systems team, you may specialise narrowly - reporting only, or testing only - and work on a major platform alongside IT. In a smaller organisation you may be the only person who understands the system, doing everything from data entry to vendor liaison, often on a simpler piece of software. Public sector and NHS employers tend to use different systems from large private-sector employers and work to formal pay bands with structured progression; consultancies and software vendors offer a more project-based, client-facing version of the same skills, sometimes with travel. Whether the role reports into HR or into IT also changes the job's flavour considerably - and some roles are heavily tied to the payroll cycle, which brings hard monthly deadlines that others do not have.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.