Today's employers want to hire for soft skills, but finding qualified candidates and retaining talented
employees who possess these skills is rarely simple. With the right approach to assess soft skills, you can
identify candidates and employees who have the tools to thrive in your organization. You don't need to be a hiring expert to evaluate soft skills in candidates and employees. Whether you're
recruiting or promoting from within, here are five tactics to use: The average company needs three weeks or longer to hire the right candidate. Fortunately, you can
assess a candidate's soft skills during an interview to accelerate the hiring process. Create a list of interview questions that encourage a candidate to describe situations in which they:
In their responses, look for evidence of intangible qualities needed to succeed in the available
role. Make sure you standardize the interview questions used, so you can easily "compare apples to
apples" and determine how well candidates' soft skills stack up against one another. Reference checks are often used to learn about a candidate's professional expertise. Yet employers
can look beyond professional references to assess a candidate's soft skills. Ask a candidate to provide professional and personal references. In doing so, you can reach out to
references to learn about a candidate's technical skills, along with their ability to: Encourage references to provide examples of times in which a candidate used their soft skills. These
examples showcase a candidate's ability to use soft skills in different scenarios. A candidate self-assessment generally won't take long to conduct and can be completed early in the
interview process. Plus, the assessment helps employers evaluate a candidate's soft skills related
to a specific role. Produce a self-assessment that allows a candidate to rate their soft skills. The assessment can
emphasize a variety of soft skills, including: If a candidate's soft skills fall in line with job requirements, you may have found the right
candidate. On the other hand, if a candidate lacks essential soft skills, you may want to remove
them from consideration. An online test provides an unbiased assessment to evaluate a candidate's or employee's ability to
perform a job. As such, it offers an effective way to analyze a candidate's or employee's soft
skills and improve talent recruitment and retention. Thanks to an online soft skills test, you can measure a candidate's or employee's: Use online soft skills tests that include true/false, multiple choice or essay questions - or a
combination of the three. This helps you understand how a candidate or employee uses soft skills to
respond to assorted work scenarios and hire or promote accordingly. Research indicates most talent professionals believe it is more important to hire for soft skills
than hard skills. With real-world exercises, you can simultaneously judge a candidate's or
employee's soft and hard skills. Use a real-world exercise to discover how a candidate or employee responds to a problem. This allows
you to see how a candidate or employee applies soft and hard skills to: A real-world exercise provides a learning opportunity for both you and a candidate or employee. The
exercise shows you how an individual uses soft and hard skills to address a problem. At the same
time, the exercise shows the person what you will expect from them on a day-to-day basis. The Bottom Line on Assessing Soft Skills Soft skills separate a good candidate or employee from an exceptional one. To properly gauge a candidate's
overall "fit," employers must look beyond education, hard skills and industry expertise. Instead, employers
must use soft skills assessments to: Need help finding candidates who are a great match? A qualified staffing or recruiting partner uses a wide range of tools to ensure candidates are an ideal match
for your available job and culture. From structured interviews to in-depth reference checks to job
benchmarking, recruiting experts learn the soft skills required for success in your organization - and refer
individuals who will thrive on the job.