What you need to know about soft skills recruitment
It's no secret that recruitment mistakes are costly. But if soft skills become part of the recruitment process, you'll give your organization the best chance of avoiding bad hires.
When looking for a candidate, it's equally important to select a candidate based on their soft skills. But what are soft skills and why are they important to your organization? We've written a little piece on that.
Look at potential and stop tunnel visioning your career
Recruiting for potential means shifting the focus from education, experience and skills to the personal qualities that your organization values. In this way, the core becomes the candidate's ability to fit in socially and culturally rather than the candidate's formal path to the position (right education and experience). The fundamental difference between soft and hard skills is that hard skills can often be learned, whereas soft skills are entirely personal characteristics.
Soft skills defined
Soft skills refer to personal qualities and competencies that are important for functioning well in a work situation and workplace. For example, the ability to communicate effectively, work in teams, take responsibility and solve problems. These skills can be just as important, if not more important, than a candidate's professional skills when it comes to succeeding in a position and in the company in general.
Soft skills can be described as the behaviors that show who we are when we are at work. These include creativity, critical thinking, communication skills, drive and motivation or flexibility. Read more about DISC, which is a powerful tool integrated into our solution.
So what should you be aware of?
When you next recruit, your company culture should be the foundation for what soft skills are needed to thrive in the position - as well as your company culture. This decision is essential, and the best advice is to involve your employees in the process so that these are not dictated from above.
Benefits and challenges of recruiting on soft skills
We've put together a brief overview of the benefits and challenges of recruiting on soft skills.
In some roles, it can be difficult to assess candidates based solely on their hard skills. This can be overcome by focusing on the potential of the candidate. By focusing on soft skills, it is possible to build and support a good company culture.
Benefits:
- Soft skills can increase diversity in the company, which we recognize time and time again is a huge success factor. It also avoids having too many people in the workplace with the same education and experience, which can potentially damage the company culture.
- Soft skills can shift the focus to what attributes help your business grow - for example: creativity helps you find new ways and ideas, communication skills help you get everyone working together in the right direction and problem solving can help you avoid getting stuck in challenges.
- You can broaden your search for candidates if you focus on potential and soft skills rather than hard skills, which can often have high requirements and therefore potentially remove talented and passionate candidates.
Challenges:
- Measuring and defining soft skills and potential is difficult. Not everyone has the same understanding of "creativity" or "leadership skills", for example.
Soft skills should be an integral part of recruitment in the future
A great way to get started using soft skills in recruitment is by using a recruitment system that has it built in easily and intuitively.
Finally, we recommend that you think about the position you're filling and what the person should be able to achieve - in their role, in the team and in the organization in general. How do you want them to develop in the future?
