It should be no surprise employers are looking for soft skills in their new hires. In fact, according to LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends Report, 80% of the more than 5,000 talent professionals surveyed, 80% say soft skills are increasingly important to company success. They specifically identified: creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and time management as the soft skills in highest demand. To be even more specific, 92% of the talent professionals stated soft skills are more important than hard skills, and 89% stated bad hires are usually a matter of poor soft skills.

So how do companies assess a candidate’s soft skills?

According to the talent professional interviewed, they rely on 5 key ways to assess soft skills during the hiring process:

• Behavioral Questions (75%)
• Reading Body Language (70%)
• Situational Questions (58%)
• Projects (31%)
• Tech-based Assessments (17%)

Behavioral questions such as: Tell me about a time when you failed or give me an example of a conflict with a coworker and how you handled it or tell us about a time when you had to make a significant pivot in a project, don’t necessarily show us how a potential candidate will act in the future. Samantha McLaren, author of the LinkedIn Talent Blog post entitled, “The Tactic This Expert Uses to Assess Soft Skills (Hint: It Doesn’t Involve Behavioral Questions” presents three tactics used by John Vlastelica – the founder of the talent acquisition firm, Recruiting Toolbox. His firm focuses on a hybrid of demonstrational and problem-solving questions:

Step 1: Ask the candidate to solve a problem using their hard skills

John的观点是要求候选人使用所需的技术技能来解决与特定角色相关的问题。他建议的一个例子是让应聘者制定一个30-6-90天计划——不是提前，而是在面试的过程中。他建议提供一套假设和材料，如纸、白板、电脑等。招聘经理可以在整个过程中观察候选人，注意到候选人为完成任务所使用的具体技能。

第二步：引入新的约束和条件，看看候选人如何适应变化

现在，为了了解应聘者是如何运用软技能的，约翰·弗拉斯特利卡建议通过“在挑战中加入现实世界的限制因素——比如更短的时间框架和更低的预算”来将其混合起来。他认为，这是一个很好的机会，可以观察应聘者是否能够独立思考——这是一项重要的软技能。其他可观察到的软技能包括：沟通、适应性、转向等。

第三步：与候选人合作，看看他们的软技能如何发挥作用

最后一步是要求候选人与招聘经理合作解决问题。John Vlastelica并没有询问他们合作的时间，而是说：“如果他们对你的想法感到兴奋，并试图在你的想法的基础上发展，那么他们可能很擅长团队合作。但如果他们有戒心，不承认你的反馈或问题，或者不知道如何将你的想法融入到他们的解决方案中，你可能有理由担心。”

毫无疑问，软技能是当今职场成功的关键。如果你正在考虑做出改变，那么首先花些时间评估一下你的软技能，如果缺乏，那么就和一个值得信赖的同事一起练习，以防你在面试中被要求解决问题或合作。如果你是一名招聘经理，评估一下你的面试惯例，并考虑将John Vlastelica在他的人才搜索公司中使用的步骤纳入其中。

最好的，