Published on December 1, 2021
Soft skills are an important hiring criterion
The work that a middle or senior manager does in a company is not only based on technical or academic skills. It is often a question of orchestrating the different components of the organization in a project where many people are engaged. Today, soft skills are more than ever a determining factor in executive recruitment.
Every day, middle and senior managers are responsible for many interactions with other team members, but also with customers or suppliers. These executives and managers must therefore possess a great relational capacity, skills that are different from technical skills such as diplomas, which are above all rational skills.
It is these “relational, human or behavioral” skills that we are rediscovering today, and that we group under the term “soft skills”, as opposed to “hard skills”, the more technical or academic skills. These soft skills encompass emotional, cognitive and relational skills. They have become and have always been essential to the success of projects carried out by organizations.
In short, employers, recruiters and headhunters are rediscovering that soft skills are just as important as know-how. These soft skills are now scrutinized by headhunters. For a candidate, it is therefore important to highlight them in his CV, to be able to talk about his own soft skills in his job interview from his experience, and of course, to use them in his everyday work!
To be able to talk about yourself, it is essential to have a fairly accurate portrait of your profile in terms of behavioral skills. What are your strengths and weaknesses in communication, leadership and problem solving? Are you flexible and adaptable in your relationships with colleagues? You will find a list of the most sought-after soft skills a little later in this article.
These behavioural skills also include the candidate’s personal values. Recruiters and headhunters are the first to ask themselves the following question when they do a pre-job interview. : “Are the personality and values of this candidate in line with the values of the company seeking to hire him? No one wants to be disappointed!
Soft skills are in demand
At first glance, one might think that the most in-demand behavioural skills may be different in construction, manufacturing or services. Of course, there are nuances.
Managing a team of telecommuting professionals may be different from managing an in situ construction project or a team in a manufacturing plant. But there is a lot of overlap. Inspiring trust, being clear in your guidelines, being fair and equitable, giving project direction, listening, having flexibility, being creative in the face of a problem are all behavioral skills in demand in today’s world. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. They may have simply been forgotten, stunned by the incessant technological advances and the dissemination of high-level knowledge.
Headhunters and recruiters know that companies are looking for dynamic but flexible profiles, technical but also intuitive, empathetic people, attentive to the well-being of the team and with a sense of the collective, executives able to take initiatives on their own, not only docile hierarchical respondents.
If a candidate knows how to showcase his soft skills to a headhunter, it could also help him negotiate the terms of a comprehensive offer including satisfactory remuneration with a new employer. Upstream of a hiring process, it could also be very convenient to establish a first telephone contact with a headhunter.
In their screening interviews, recruiters and headhunters pay much more attention to candidates with clearly expressed behavioral skills to align them with the values of the company for which they have been given the mandate to find the rare pearl.
How to highlight your soft skills
If you’re an executive, and this is even more true if you’re a senior executive or executive, you know the importance of behavioral skills in your day-to-day work. You’ll want to 1) identify them, 2) make them known, and 3) improve them. Let’s review these three points one by one.
- Know the behavioural skills in demand
- Identify your strengths and weaknesses
- Continuously improve your weak points
1. Know the behavioural skills in demand
It is very difficult to lie about your soft skills. Our behavioural skills are an integral part of our personality and our personality is precisely what emerges from an interview. Not just what is said but how it is said.
It is therefore important to be able to talk about your soft skills as we talk about your higher education and to contextualize them in your everyday work. You have to not only talk about them but show how you have embodied them in your work. The recruiter, the employer or the headhunter will be able to better assess whether your profile is suitable for the position to be filled. For an employer, it is very important to know if your personality matches the company’s values and to hire the best candidate. for the position to be filled.
What are these behavioural skills? These are, for example, character traits, values, ways of thinking or personal qualities. For example: team spirit, initiative, knowing how to manage priorities, anticipate needs, know how to adapt to situations, know how to gather, take initiatives, be organized, etc. The human personality has so many different facets!
Some behavioral skills can be innate and others can develop as the experience is gained, depending on the successes and challenges encountered during one’s career, but also in life in general. The behavioral skills most in demand also change with the times.
For example, before the health crisis, it could be frowned upon to value self-discipline and rigor, at the risk of being seen as too rigid or independent. Today, valuing one’s ability to self-discipline in teleworking without being distracted by the elements of everyday life is an asset.
In a collaborative hiring context, see behavioral skills as a way to explore whether your personality matches the requirements of a job opening in an organization. Here are the most sought-after soft skills today.
- Have a sense of organization
- Be reliable
- Inspire trust and trust
- Demonstrate self-discipline and autonomy
- Demonstrate rigor and maintain critical thinking
- Have team spirit, even when working from home
- Be flexible
- Knowing how to manage stress
- Be comfortable with technology
- Taking initiative
- Demonstrate empathy and listening to others
2. Identify your strengths and weaknesses
How to know your strengths and weaknesses in terms of soft skills? Here are some tips that will be useful to you.
Ask for advice from those around you. If you have the opportunity, it is always easier to become aware of your own behavioral skills by asking for external advice from those around you, your former colleagues or your employers. They know you well and have the necessary perspective to inform you judiciously. This can be very informal or more formalized. For example, rate each skill from 1 to 10 and ask them to rate you.
Do a self-examination. Put your career under the microscope. Look back at the key moments of your professional career: the challenges you have succeeded, the difficulties overcome, the obstacles you have been able to overcome. Through these experiences, you will already be able to identify some personality traits or attitudes that you have been able to put into practice and that have had a positive impact on the course of things. In addition, this exercise will allow you to prepare for the job interview. It will allow you to talk about your soft skills from life experiences and concrete situations.
Meet a professional. Some occupational psychologists specialize in this area. The assessment takes place in two stages: first an in-person interview, followed by a more in-depth analysis through the use of different tools such as professional behaviour questionnaires, aptitude tests and scenarios. The results are then commented on in the presence of the candidate.
3. Continuously improve your weak points
If you like reading, you could read one of the many books published on the development of soft skills. They are surely good sellers in these times and some are surely excellent. You will not be caught off guard if an employer who carries out in-house recruitment brings you to this field. But you could also do it differently.
Developing one’s behavioral skills is the story of a lifetime.
It can be life at work or life at all. If you know your weaknesses, and you want to improve them, it may be wiser to choose these particular aspects of your personality and improve them. Specific training or life experiences outside of work could help you with social, cognitive or relational skills. This is called personal development. After all, working on yourself may be the best way to find work at all!
Identify your behavioral skills, highlight them prominently in your resume. Use your behavioral competency profile to establish a career plan that aligns with your personality and values. Know how to talk about it concretely in a job interview with a recruiter, a headhunter or an employer by linking them to your work experiences. This is an invaluable asset in any hiring process.
Read our next blog: 4 tips for a resume that stands out
