When trying to fill an open position on your team, it’s easy to get caught up in a candidate’s hard skills — those acquired over time that can be easily measured. Without a doubt, these abilities are crucial, but they should never be the only factors involved in a hiring decision.
Soft skills — innate character traits governing how people interact with one another — are just as crucial, and may actually be even more important, because they’re harder to change. For example, it’s much easier to train a person to use a new software system than to teach them how to become an effective communicator.
3 Soft Skills Every Candidate Must Have
You may think you’ve found the perfect candidate, but if they don’t have all three of these soft skills, keep searching until you find someone that does.
- All it takes is one negative person to bring down the morale of the entire group. Search for a new hire who finds the good in every situation — even the most challenging ones — because these people are genuinely enjoyable to be around. In business, things frequently don’t go as planned, so you need employees who find ways to work past road blocks, instead of getting defeated by them.
- The business realm is largely unpredictable, so priorities can shift in the blink of an eye. If an employee is largely averse to change, they’ll hold your entire team back. It doesn’t matter how talented the person is if they don’t have the capacity to bounce from one project to the next as needed.
- As a rational boss, you don’t expect your employees to be perfect, but they do need to own their mistakes. Hire a person who accepts their mishaps, learns from them and moves on. People who play the victim and point the finger at others aren’t team players and they certainly don’t belong on your staff.
Contact PrideStaff North Dallas to hire the right person for the job every time. Our skilled recruiters won’t stop working until we find the absolute best fit for your temporary, temp-to-hire and direct hire positions.
