These ‘Soft Skills’ are Worthy of Every Leader’s Hiring Wishlist
Raw talent and specialized skills are important when it comes to hiring the right employees, but so are these other – more subjective qualities.
We’ve all been there before, resumes of potential new hires in-hand. By the time the stack of the twenty most qualified candidates lands on your desk, hundreds of others have already been screened and dismissed by your HR department or hiring manager. Those that remain for you to consider and approve have been carefully vetted.
Job descriptions list the required qualifications, which largely consist of what we consider “hard skills.” These are the education requirements, years of experience, and technical expertise necessary to perform a job. And these same hard skills listed in a job description are used to whittle down the applicant pool.
But what if we’re missing something? What if, as leaders, we’re putting too little emphasis on the soft skills that tend to be regarded as ‘optional’ or ‘nice to have’? As it turns out, not enough credence is given to a set of ‘soft skills’ that has risen to the top of every major employers’ wish list.
Here are the 7 most in-demand soft skills for new hires in 2018, and why it may change how leaders prioritize skills in the future.
Friendly / Likable
This is one quality that you won’t see featured on a resume. It’s nearly impossible for a resume to capture someone’s personality outside of their writing style, which is understandably professional for resume purposes.
Diplomatic
Being diplomatic has a lot to do with a person’s communication style and people skills. Can they articulate their point of view, response, directive, or question politely and without causing offense? Creating and maintaining a positive company culture hinges on how people treat and interact with each other and your customers.
Entrepreneurial
While you don’t want your best employees going off and starting their own thing necessarily, there is something particularly attractive about an entrepreneurial-minded individual. These people can see opportunity where others may not. And they tend to take calculated risks that can pay off in big ways if you’re willing to bet on their ideas. Candidates who possess this skill are also able to figure out the best way to perform a task or complete a project without their manager having to give them step-by-step instructions. When someone has the confidence that they can “figure it out,” it’s a win-win usually.
Organized
Being organized is a desired skill for almost any job, regardless of industry. An employee who is organized is efficient, and efficient employees are productive. Disorganization leads to ineffectiveness to do a job well or meet deadlines. That in turn can create a stressful work environment to the person who is disorganized, but also to the people who work with or for him.
Curiosity
Life-long learning is more and more sought after by employers. Why? Because with the ever-increasing pace of life and technology, hiring people who are willing and interested in learning new things will help move the company forward. There’s an old saying that complacency leads to failure, so spotting potential employees with a natural fervor for the unknown is a worthwhile endeavor.
Critical Thinking
Decisions are made every day by everyone. Are your employees able to make a sound decision under an array of circumstances with conflicting variables? Team members who are able to quickly process and assess a situation from multiple perspectives, and then make a determination of the best action to take may be one of the most valuable skills for your employees to have. Poor decision making can literally cost your company thousands of dollars.
Consider this: English majors tend to have incredibly high critical thinking skills, because of how their education has directly trained them to dissect a text, analyze plots, conflicts, and characters from multiple perspectives, and support their findings in a well-written narrative. How many technical positions look for candidates with this liberal arts background? And yet, it is one of the highest valued soft skills.
Creativity
Creativity is what helps keep a company fresh and alive. It’s where innovative new ideas are born and masterfully realized. Creative people can have wonderful ideas or they can breathe life into someone else’s wonderful idea. Creative people have vision and a way of taking an abstract concept and creating lines around it that can be colored in and then seen by everyone else. People with creativity can also find new ways of doing something that’s more effective or impactful.
Key Takeaways
Don’t be surprised when you find more and more companies looking for the same soft skills you want. It will make an already tight job market, even more competitive to attract and retain the best of the best talent. Because finding employees that posses the technical skills you need, as well as these other socially-based skills and personality types will keep certain candidates in high-demand.
A few ways you can start screening for these soft skills during the application process (beyond the resume) is by:
posing a problem scenario and having applicants submit a writing sample of how they would resolve the issue
requesting letters of recommendation from past supervisors, coworkers, or educators
reviewing applicants’ public social media accounts to get a sense of who they are and how they present themselves
conducting brief 10-minute video introductions in lieu of the phone interview
hosting onsite job fairs versus collecting online resumes, so you can meet and screen candidates in person
giving your top candidates a mock assignment and assess who does the best job
Sourcing the best talent can (and probably should) be time-consuming. And some of these suggestions may feel like they take more time and energy to manage. That being said, it is far more cost-effective to take the time upfront to hire the right candidate than to deal with the expense and operational disruption of employee turnover if a new hire doesn’t work out.