A list of the 7 essential soft skills for revealing hidden talent... and recruiting it!
According to Altays, 62% of managers and executives with managerial responsibilities are prepared to recruit a candidate primarily on the basis of his or her behavioural skills. Knowledge hard-won at school no longer has a central place with recruiters. Today, soft skills, in other words personal aptitudes, are decisive for an employee and for meeting your recruitment needs.
But while technical knowledge is easily distinguished by diplomas or assessments, how can you identify the soft skills in your candidates? No problemo, in this article co-written with Déborah Romain-Delacour, we give you the keys to a successful recruitment process! 🤩
Why have soft skills become as essential as hard skills?
Hard skills are the technical skills acquired at school, in training or through professional experience. They are easily identifiable and measurable at a job interview, thanks in particular to diplomas or previous positions held.
If hard skills are so easy to identify, why are recruiters looking for candidates with developed soft skills? 🤔
Knowing your job inside out is all well and good, but demonstrating interpersonal skills so that you can easily integrate into your company is even better! Soft skills include collective behaviour or behavioural faculties that you are not really taught at school, but which are a major need for any profession.
In short, soft skills make for a better working environment conducive to performance, and that's what every good recruiter is looking for, isn't it? 😉
| Hard skills | Soft skills |
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Microsoft Office Data interpretation Financial planning Copywriting Project management Languages spoken |
Communication skills Time management Critical thinking skills Leadership Motivation Ambition Negotiation skills |
Adapted from © Valamis
A word from the expert
Soft skills are essential. It's not enough to have know-how or expertise in a field, you also need to be able to communicate that expertise, work as part of a team, manage your emotions, show empathy, be organised, etc. Soft skills are necessary to
adapt to the world of work and develop new skills.
What are the 7 soft skills to look out for in talented people?
We've put together the top 7 soft skills we think are essential for top candidates! 🔥
#1 The ability to adapt
Since the emergence of teleworking with the health crisis, new expectations have been demanded by recruiters. Who would have thought that over 70% of companies would (in spite of themselves) adopt hybrid working? Absolutely nobody, and yet some employees have adapted perfectly to the situation in a very short space of time.
No matter what happens in the future, an employee with good adaptability will be able to cope with any situation... pretty reassuring for you. 😌
#2 Critical thinking
With the increasing flow of information on a daily basis, a faculty of this kind is very much in demand in the workplace. Critical thinking is about taking a step back from our environment, confronting a multitude of ideas, filtering different information and finding the most useful to deal with an issue.
#3 Stress management
Stress is one of the main problems affecting the daily lives of employees. It causes us to expend a lot of energy and reduces our cognitive abilities. 🤯
Knowing how to manage stress therefore enables you to remain calm in the face of pressure or an abnormal situation so that you can make the right decisions in a rational manner. This asset is particularly advantageous for managers who are under a lot of pressure and have to manage it so as not to pass it on to their teams.
#4 Emotional intelligence
Identifying the emotions of others, as well as one's own emotions, is one of the skills that was not really considered necessary a few years ago, and yet it is only recently that this quality has come to the top of the list.
There's nothing like an employee who can understand his or her work colleagues to establish a framework of trust.
#5 Problem solving
Finding appropriate solutions to new problems requires reasoning, intuition... and a fair amount of motivation. 💪
By being able to overcome the difficulties encountered within the company, a candidate with this ability can boost your performance as well as being a comforting support for all the managers in your organisation. He's the one on whom your confidence rests, and that's a relief!
#6 Creativity
An essential skill for your company's ability to innovate and its originality. Hiring a creative person is always useful for coming up with unique ideas that you wouldn't have thought of and setting yourself apart from the competition!
#7 Autonomy
Being autonomous means setting your own objectives, carrying out your tasks without asking your n+1 and finding the resources you need for your tasks yourself. In short, it's the Mike Horn that every company wants.
A word from the expert
There's one soft skill I'd like to talk about, because it's still little known in France, yet it's number 1 in Korea. It's called "nunchi" and there's no direct translation into French. It's a socio-emotional skill that Koreans learn from childhood, in the family and at school. It's a soft skill that is indispensable in this collectivist society, where looking out for others is deeply rooted culturally.
In reality, nunchi brings together a whole range of soft skills that should be harnessed together:
- empathy: putting yourself in other people's shoes;
- managing emotions and impulses: understanding spontaneousreactions and adapting them as best you can;
- attention: knowing how to detect what is not directly visible.
Nunchi is therefore a soft skill that enables you to build positive social relationships with others and thus develop individual and collective well-being. An essential condition for a successful and creativesociety .
How do you test soft skills to identify them?
As you know, it's difficult to identify your candidates' soft skills, especially when there are dozens of different ones. However, some of them speak for themselves, such as candidates who are good communicators during interviews, or who are good team players or stress managers.
Fortunately, there are various methods to help you.
Social networks
You can play detective and investigate your candidates. 🕵️♀️ Take care to keep a sufficiently close eye on what you see (particularly photos taken during drunken evenings and of the youngest candidates). The aim is to find things that give you an idea of their personality, such as their passions, the books they like to read or other similar information.
Psychometric tests
Be careful with this one!
If you use a questionnaire, candidates will tend to value themselves. But having an idea of their answers can still be very interesting and give you some guidance. Don't hesitate to discuss this with your candidate during the interview to make sure that what they say is true.
Personality tests are also a very good way of finding out about your candidates' personal aptitudes.
MyCommunIT is a SaaS platform where candidates and recruiters meet. What makes it special? A special soft skills personality test, digitally schematised for recruiters! The candidate completes a questionnaire, then 9 personality traits are presented for each of them, making it easier for you to make your choice.
Role-playing
Nothing beats recruitment by simulation! Very fashionable this year, you can see for yourself how your candidates behave during a practical exercise, which can help you make your final choice, as well as being great fun! 🥳
The importance of the exercise is not really the final success, but rather the way the candidates act, their interactions to deal with the problem, the time they spend on it, etc. All the same, take into account their stress, which can weigh in the balance in the event of great difficulty, but on the whole a simulation is much more fun and brings out their potential, so it's up to you to be creative and create your own simulation! 🤩
A word from the expert
There's a real fashion phenomenon around soft skills, and some tests are riding the wave by promising a detailed analysis of soft skills in the workplace. But tests are not magic. It is important to use psychometric tests that have been scientifically validated. But these tests should be taken with a grain of salt, as there is always a margin of error.
In my view, soft skills are revealed in situations: in expression and in action. It is therefore essential for recruiters to be able to organise qualitative interviews with candidates based on a set of open questions , so that they can express themselves freely.
To do this, the recruiter needs to know how to create a climate of trust, and that means adopting an authentic posture: simply being yourself and taking a genuine interest in the person you are talking to. Candidates who are listened to and feel confident can then be themselves. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved, and helps avoid recruitment mistakes.
It's also important, wherever possible, to put the candidate into action: to give them the power to act so that they can reveal their skills and, above all, their potential for development, which will be demonstrated by the expression of their soft skills in situations: listening, questioning , collaboration, emotional management, planning, organisation, creativity, etc. Giving the candidatea practical case to solve can be a good way of gaining access to these skills.
Finally, it's important never to forget that soft skills develop, so a recruiter needs to be able to identify the soft skills that are essential for taking up the job, and those that can be developed at a later stage through professional practice or training.
So, have you mastered the soft skills that are essential in the workplace?
Soft skills are essential for finding the best talent during your recruitment process. As well as providing a stable working environment, your employees have that little something that makes them indispensable to the company!
The methods for identifying them aren't easy, but if you're careful enough, you're bound to find what you're looking for! 👍
Article translated from French