In yesterday’s Advisor, we outlined a few of the many soft skills that employers are often looking for when recruiting new employees. Often, soft skills are just as important—or even more important—as technical skills and expertise required for the job. It’s tougher to teach soft skills than it is technical skills!
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How to Recruit for Soft Skills
So, how can you recruit for soft skills? Let’s take a look at a few ways:
- When crafting job descriptions, be sure that soft skills are included. For example, if the ability to work well on a team is important, list it. If good communication skills are crucial, say so. Work with the entire hiring team to get input on what soft skills are critical to success for the role.
- Pay close attention to how the candidate presents him or herself. For example, does the candidate communicate clearly and professionally? Does he or she interact appropriately with everyone involved in the recruiting process? Soft skills can be presented both directly and indirectly during the recruiting process.
- Ensure that some of your interview questions are directly related to assessing soft skills. This often means using behavioral questions that ask the candidate to give specific examples of how they did (or how they would) act in different scenarios. For example, a behavioral interview question might be something along the lines of “Tell me about an experience you had in the past where you had a difficult coworker and how you handled the situation.” This type of question—one in which you’re assessing real examples of how this person would handle a situation—can give you a lot of insight into the way this person thinks and how he or she might act as an employee.
- Also, utilize interview questions to assess candidate viewpoints and personality. For example, ask the candidate about his or her views on things like the ideal team environment or the ideal work day. These types of questions can help assess the candidate’s expectations and how well he or she is aligned with what is being offered.
- Don’t ignore your gut when a “good on paper” candidate does not demonstrate the necessary soft skills to perform well at the organization. This is much easier said than done, especially in an environment where turnover is high and hiring cannot keep up with demand. But, a bad hire is usually worse than a delay in finding a better candidate.
- Work with the entire HR team to help bridge skills gaps that are identified during or after the recruiting process. After all, it is often difficult to find a candidate that has all of the technical skills as well as all of the soft skills required for a role. But, the organization can help to minimize problems by assessing gaps in both types of skills right away and taking steps to improve. For example, just as you might hire someone who still needs to finalize a certification before being fully ready to complete the job at hand, it may also be an option to hire someone who has the other skills and expertise but could use additional training on one or more soft skills. Work with the rest of the organization to see how this might be accomplished.
What other steps have you taken to assess a candidate’s soft skills? Do you routinely include necessary soft skills as part of the job description?