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Employees’ soft skills are responsible for up to 85% of on-the-job success, according to research from Harvard University, Stanford University, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Unsurprisingly, companies have begun to seek ways to measure and evaluate soft skills in the hiring process.
Soft skills are non-technical skills that relate to how someone works, including interactions with colleagues, communication skills, time management, problem-solving, leadership, empathy, and managing workloads. They differ from hard skills in that they are transferable, and candidates can utilize them regardless of the job.
Unlike hard skills, which are quantifiable, soft skills can be harder to identify and measure. Organizations looking to incorporate soft skills into their ideal candidate profile have a couple of options on how to measure them in candidates.
Ask Behavioral and Situational Questions
The questions asked during an interview can highlight the soft skills being sought by the employer.
One method hiring managers can use to uncover soft skills is through behavioral-based interview questions. For example, questions focusing on past experiences and how candidates have handled certain situations can help gauge soft skills such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and leadership. Asking them in an open-ended way (i.e., “Tell me about a time when…,”) gives candidates the opportunity to talk about their experience in their own way.
Employers looking for soft skills related to very specific on-the-job circumstances can opt for situational interview questions. These are questions that present hypothetical situations that are relevant to what a candidate would likely face if they landed the job.
Some examples of situational questions could be:
- If you were falling behind schedule, what would you do?
- How would you react if a team leader encouraged competition between team members instead of collaboration?
- How would you prioritize your workload if you were given multiple tasks by different people who all said theirs was the most important?
Using a combination of behavioral and situational questions can help hiring managers identify those candidates proficient in the soft skills they are seeking more easily, as well as weed out those who may be lacking regardless of the hard skills they may bring to the table.
Use Assessment Tools
Another way to measure soft skills is by using assessment tools.
Recruiting assessment tools are valuable in hiring as they help identify and evaluate potential candidates. These tests aim to identify an individual’s traits and soft skills by how strongly they relate to statements presented in the assessment.
Traditional Options
Many well-known assessment tools come in the form of tests or games applicants are asked to complete in addition to an interview. They can be multiple-choice where the candidates are given a hypothetical situation and a range of responses tied to more and less desirable traits. Others ask candidates to score themselves in certain traits and skills and then are given a scale of numbers (1-5, 1-10) or a range of options like “Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree” to select from.
These methods have often been tested and validated, but they do come with risks when the candidates are asked to score themselves:
Another hurdle of assessment tools could be the willingness of candidates to take them at all. If a process is seen as too long and drawn out, they could go with the company that makes them an offer first, regardless of how good of a fit the job may be.
Next-Gen Assessment Tools
Newer players in the assessment field are leveraging technology to solve these issues.
For example, Talent Select AI recently launched an innovative, eponymous employee assessment product that provides accurate, unbiased candidate insights by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the words applicants use right from the job interview. No traditional psychometric testing, no gamified assessments, and no extra steps required.
Talent Select AI sets itself apart from other AI assessment tools by analyzing the words candidates use during their interviews — the interview is the assessment.
By analyzing the words the candidate uses during the job interview, Talent Select AI provides an unbiased picture of each candidate, accurately measuring motivational traits, professional competencies, and personality traits that have been proven to predict success.
“AI is a powerful tool for removing bias from the hiring process, because it can be trained to review every candidate in the exact same manner, every single time,” explains Talent Select AI CTO Will Rose. “Unlike humans, AI isn’t impacted by external distractions like hunger or fatigue, or common human biases like first impression bias or similarity bias and other factors can influence how a candidate is perceived.”
Talent Select AI uses an established industrial organizational psychology approach to quantify a candidate's soft skills accurately by analyzing the words they use to describe themselves and their experiences. While the science behind the approach has been around for decades, AI has only recently made it possible to do it effectively at scale.
“What impresses me most about Talent Select AI is how — shockingly is the only way I can put it — how shockingly effective these techniques are,” says Mike Campion, Ph.D., Herman C. Krannert, Distinguished Professor of Management at Purdue University and widely-published IO psychologist, said in a recent interview.
Overall, assessment tools offer a powerful way for organizations to evaluate candidates and employees objectively and make data-driven decisions. By using these tools, organizations can reduce bias in the hiring process, identify areas for employee development, and make more informed hiring decisions.
Organizations looking for the best candidates will want to determine not only what they can do (hard skills) but how they do it (soft skills). Incorporating assessments or behavior-based questions into the interview process will help create a fuller picture of candidates.
Talent Select AI makes it possible to generate validated candidate insights across 17 key professional traits and competencies – including 4 new Motivational Traits (grit, proactiveness, empathy, and enthusiasm) as well as the Big 5 Personality Traits and Great 8 Workplace Competencies – right from the interview, so you can make more effective, data-driven hiring decisions.
Schedule a free consultation to see how Talent Select AI can help your organization gain more complete candidate insights, create a more positive experience for candidates and hiring teams alike, and drive better hiring outcomes across the board.
