Hiring for Soft Skills: What To Look for in Your Next Hire
/The demand for social, emotional, and communicative skills — a.k.a., “soft skills” or “durable skills” — is here to stay and growing. In fact, one survey found that “84% of employees and managers believe new employees must possess soft skills and demonstrate them in the hiring process.”
While most employers understand the concept of soft skills, many struggle to identify which soft skills they most need or have a plan to uncover those skills in potential new hires.
Uncovering and assessing a candidate’s hard skills for a particular job is fairly straightforward. Determining whether a position demands soft skills — such as staying calm under pressure, collaboration, active listening, strategic thinking, or resilience — is not as straightforward.
In this blog, we’ll examine what you need to know about hiring for soft skills: what they are, why they’re important to your organization, how to determine which soft skills you need, and how to evaluate those skills in your hiring process.
What Are Soft Skills, and Why Are They Important?
Soft skills are interpersonal skills related to how people work, interact, and communicate with others. These skills complement the “hard” skills required for a position, and can include:
Critical thinking and problem solving
Time management
Emotional intelligence and empathy
Self-awareness, resilience, and patience
Teamwork and collaboration
Communication skills like active listening and written and verbal skills
Conflict resolution
Flexibility and adaptability
Creative thinking
Leadership skills
Soft skills like these help employees work together, learn new skills, and understand how their work contributes to business goals. Hiring employees who bring the soft skills necessary for success in the job helps you build a more productive, collaborative, and healthy workplace.
Hiring for soft skills is often more difficult than hiring for hard skills because it's challenging to pinpoint which soft skills are essential for a role…and even harder to accurately assess them during the interview process.
For example, if you're looking to hire someone based primarily on traits like reliability and strong interpersonal skills, it's tough to articulate these qualities in job ads, and nearly impossible to spot them on a resume. Without a clear strategy, hiring decisions will likely rely more on the hiring manager’s subjective judgment rather than objective, measurable criteria.
In most cases, companies seek candidates with both specific experience and soft skills. In this scenario, it’s just as crucial to develop a strategy for evaluating both hard and soft skills during the interview process.
Defining the Soft Skills Your Company & the Position Need
When hiring for soft skills, you first need to figure out which soft skills your company and the particular position need. This can vary depending on the role, your company culture and values, and the soft skills existing employees have.
First, take a look at your company's culture and values. Which soft skills are inherent to maintaining the culture you’ve built and ensuring both employee and client satisfaction?
Next, consider the staff you want to duplicate. Which soft skills, values, or behaviors do they bring to the table? Which skills do your top performers have that help them succeed? Engage your team members in defining the soft skills most necessary in their work as well.
Then, think about what soft skills the particular position you are hiring for requires. For example, Sales, Accountant, and Administrative roles have some shared and some varying requirements.
Once you’ve identified the set of soft skills your company and the position need, you’ll be better equipped to assess job candidates for these traits.
Evaluating Soft Skills In Your Hiring Process
To find candidates who possess the soft skills you desire, you need a plan to evaluate those skills throughout the hiring process.
A good first step is to include the soft skills you seek in your job descriptions. Then, in the interview process, develop and ask open-ended questions to assess the soft skills a candidate may have. Some examples are:
(Critical thinking) Describe a complex problem you faced that required careful thought and consideration. How did you approach the problem, what steps did you take to analyze it, and what was the outcome?
(Emotional intelligence/self-awareness) Can you describe a time when your actions or behavior had a negative effect on a team or project? How did you realize that effect and what did you do to address it?
(Collaboration) Can you share an example of how you build relationships and trust with new colleagues or team members?
(Resilience) Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to significant changes in your work environment or role. How did you handle it?
(Time Management) How do you manage your time and prioritize tasks when you have multiple deadlines or competing priorities?
In addition, look for candidates who display soft skills in the interview. This may look like asking relevant questions, making an appropriate amount of eye contact, not interrupting, and not avoiding tough questions.
Finally, include your existing team members in the hiring process. Engage your team to develop rating criteria to help you evaluate candidates for the soft skills you’re looking for.
Looking for more advice to improve your hiring process? Read through the Red Seat blog for more tips, client success stories, and more. And if you’d like to explore working with Red Seat to fill current or upcoming job openings, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 952-893-0020 or email us at info@redseat.com!
