HR Prompts so good, you’ll think you’ve been replaced
- Ana Inés Urrutia
- 4 jul
- 7 Min. de lectura
If you’ve ever spent 45 minutes rewriting the same onboarding email, manually digging up salary benchmarks for a job post that still doesn’t sound quite right, or chasing a manager (again) to approve vacation time — welcome. This one’s for you.
HR work is important, human, and — let’s be honest — often incredibly repetitive. Between the admin stuff and the endless copy-pasting, even the most strategic HR professionals end up stuck doing tasks a very smart intern could handle with decent Wi-Fi and a caffeine shot.
And yet, we keep doing it all manually. Why? Because most of the so-called “HR tech” either overpromises, underdelivers, or requires three weeks of onboarding just to send a branded calendar invite.
But what if, instead of going mental with a dozen tools and templates, we simply used the ones already available?
This is not a shiny new product or a complicated HRIS upgrade. It’s a free prompt library, built into Microsoft 365 Copilot, designed to make our lives less ridiculous. With the right words in the right box, you can delegate half your admin chaos to an AI assistant that doesn’t complain, forget deadlines, or write job descriptions that sound like a legal disclaimer. But remember that your oversight is mandatory, and often reprompting and working on the hallucinations.
No, AI’s not here to replace us — it’s here to take the boring bits.
What is the Microsoft HR Prompt library?
At its core, the Microsoft HR Prompt Library is exactly what it sounds like: a curated collection of ready-to-use prompts that help HR professionals get things done faster, smarter, and with less existential dread.
These prompts are designed to work with Microsoft 365 Copilot — meaning you can drop them directly into Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, or PowerPoint and watch your to-do list shrink in real time. But here's the secret: they're not exclusive. You can adapt them to work with any generative AI tool — whether you're using ChatGPT, another Copilot, or a custom-built agent. The magic is in the prompt, not the platform.
But this isn’t just a list of chat commands. It’s a strategic toolkit, broken down by:
🛠️ Function — think recruiting, onboarding, compensation, policy updates, and employee development
👤 Role — whether you’re in talent acquisition, HR operations, or employee experience, there’s something tailored for your job
📊 KPI impact — prompts are linked to actual outcomes like time-to-hire, retention, and benefit usage
🧠 AI maturity — categorized by “Start,” “Extend,” and “Build,” so you don’t need to be a prompt engineering genius to get value
In other words, it’s not just a cool tech demo — it’s a practical set of building blocks to modernize how HR works today. The prompts are flexible, editable, and context-aware. You can tweak them to sound more human, add your company's tone, or stack a few together to automate entire workflows - like the one below for Recruitment. You don’t need to download anything new. You just need to know what to ask.
How It Works: From Prompt to Productivity
Using the HR Prompt Library isn’t about learning a new tool — it’s about finally unlocking the potential of the tools you already use every day.
Here’s how it plays out:
✍️ Step 1: Start with a real task
You're about to:
Post a new job
Write an offer letter
Create onboarding materials
Prep for performance reviews
Summarise survey feedback
Instead of opening a blank document or chasing old templates, you open Copilot in Word, Excel, Outlook, or Teams — and feed it a prompt from the library.
🧠 Step 2: Use or adapt the Prompt
Take one of the ready-to-use suggestions like:
“Draft a customizable offer letter for a marketing manager.”
“Generate 5 interview questions for a senior data analyst.”
“Summarize our Q2 eNPS survey and highlight key concerns.”
Drop it into Copilot. Let it do the heavy lifting. Tweak if needed — you're still the expert, you’re just not starting from scratch anymore.
💡 Step 3: Stack Prompts for bigger wins
You can also chain prompts together:
→ Job Description → Interview Questions → Offer Letter → Onboarding Plan
Suddenly, you’ve handled an entire hire in 15 minutes instead of 3 days. Not magic. Just well-placed AI prompts.
📈 Step 4: Measure what matters
The real win? These prompts are tied to HR KPIs like:
⏱️ Time to hire
📉 Cost per hire
💼 Onboarding time
📣 Employee satisfaction
📊 Benefit usage
Use Copilot not just to do, but to improve.
My take: what works, what’s missing, and how to make it yours
I’ve seen a lot of “AI for HR” things that looked good on slides and fell apart the moment you tried to use them with a real org chart, three different payroll systems, and a manager who still prints emails. But this one? It’s solid. Here's why:
✅ What works
It speaks HR. The prompts aren’t just generic AI requests — they’re written with real HR workflows in mind. They know what an onboarding checklist is. They understand what goes in a job offer. Finally.
It lives where you work. You don’t need to log into another platform. These prompts are ready to go in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams — aka your actual workspace.
It's scalable without being overwhelming. Whether you're just testing one prompt or building an entire Copilot-powered agent in Studio, it’s built for wherever you are in your AI journey.
The KPI angle is smart. Most HR tools stop at "here's a feature." These go one step further: "Here's how it impacts cost per hire, onboarding time, or benefit usage."
❌ What I’d tweak
Some prompts feel too templated. A few are a bit too "consulting deck." You’ll probably want to humanise them, especially when writing emails or employee-facing content.
They assume a tidy data setup. If your HR systems are a mess (and whose aren’t?), you might need to do some connecting or cleanup before the AI gives you gold.
Missing edge-case prompts. I’d love to see prompts for things like conflict resolution, hybrid team bonding, or DEIB communications — areas where HR is doing a lot of invisible emotional labour.
🧩 How to make it yours
Personalise the tone. Rewrite output in your company’s voice — casual, formal, playful, whatever fits.
Stack prompts into flows. Don’t just stop at “generate a job post.” Follow it with interview prep, candidate communication, and onboarding materials in one go.
Create your own Prompt Library. Save the ones you love, tweak them for your team, and build a mini HR Copilot toolkit in OneNote, SharePoint, or Loop.
Use it creatively: ebyond the basics
The best part about the HR Prompt Library? It’s not just for ticking boxes — it’s a playground for people who want to reimagine how HR actually gets done.
Here are a few ways to take these prompts and make them part of something bigger, smarter, and more human:
🧠 1. Build your own “Mini Copilot”
Use Copilot Studio to wrap your favourite prompts into a chatbot or agent. Example: create a “New Hire Concierge” that answers onboarding FAQs, links to documents, and reminds managers to send welcome emails — all using the prompts you already trust.
🔄 2. Stack Prompts into repeatable workflows
Turn single-use prompts into sequences:
Job post → Salary research → Interview questions → Candidate email → Offer letter → Onboarding plan.
Save them as templates in OneNote or SharePoint so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time.}
🎯 3. Automate the feedback loop
Use Copilot in Excel and Loop to:
Collect feedback from surveys
Summarise key insights
Draft internal action plans
Update training materials in PowerPoint
Suddenly your engagement initiatives have a built-in response system — no extra hands required.
🎨 4. Use Prompts for culture, not just admin
Prompts aren’t just for paperwork. Try:
“Generate five questions for a team retrospective on psychological safety.”
“Create a plan to improve DEI onboarding experiences.”
“Draft a message to celebrate someone’s work anniversary in a warm and human tone.”
Use AI to nurture the culture, not just the process.
🧩 5. Build a Prompt library for your company
Copy the idea and make it internal:
Collect prompts your team actually uses
Tweak tone, language, and system references
Create a shareable prompt library on SharePoint, Loop, or even in Teams
This makes onboarding new HR team members (or AI-shy colleagues) 10x easier.
You are still the heart — this is just a muscle
The Microsoft HR Prompt Library isn’t about making HR robotic — it’s about giving HR the tools it deserves. Tools that save time, reduce noise, and let you focus on the actual human part of human resources.
Whether you’re rewriting the same onboarding doc for the fifth time or trying to extract insights from a 97-tab Excel sheet, these prompts give you a way out. Not by replacing your expertise — but by giving it a head start.
You don’t need to be a tech expert. You don’t need to know prompt engineering. You just need to know your job — and let Copilot help you do it with less pain and more impact.
✏️ My challenge to you:
This week, take one annoying HR task and throw a prompt at it.
See what happens.
Tweak it.
Save it.
Share it.
And if you find a prompt that changes your life (or just saves your Tuesday), I want to hear about it.
Let’s stop acting like we have to do it all by hand.
HR, meet your new co-worker: a very polite, very fast robot with excellent grammar.
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