What do you look out for when searching for the right candidate to join your team?
On a resume, there are a variety of sections – skills, experience, personal summaries, testimonials, and qualifications. All are extremely important points to keep an eye on, however, one area that can really add overall value to your business is looking out for those who have a variety of essential soft skills.
Soft skills are the interpersonal attributes that people need in order to succeed. They are what enable effective relationships between co-workers, clients, customers, and management. You can have the most technically skilled and talented member on a team but if that person lacks essential soft skills, your company’s future could be hindered.
At Citrus Connect Recruitment we go through hundreds of resumes a week, carefully going through each of them on the lookout for candidates that will add value, efficiency, and profitability to the company.
The top 5 soft skills we recommend to keep an eye out for are:
Detailed-oriented
Someone who is detail-oriented makes sure they fully understand the task at hand. They keep focusing on a certain task by planning and strategizing to make sure they stay on track and keep a constant eye on the finer details ensuring accuracy throughout the task. This helps your company avoid High-cost mistakes.
Problem-solving
Problem-solving skills are vital for both personal and professional life, they show how a person processes complex situations using logic, imagination, lateral thinking, creativity, and resilience to come up with clear action steps and solutions in a calm manner.
Leadership
People with leadership skills have the ability to take charge of situations, they are strategic thinkers, decisive, have great people skills and management allowing them to motivate others, delegate, mentor, and take on responsibilities. People with this skill can make those tough decisions and excel at managing people and the situation. They increase workplace productivity and morale within the company.
Communication
Hiring people with good communication skills increases productivity, limits unnecessary problems, and helps to create a strong team. Someone who has good communication skills is excellent at communicating with co-workers, clients, customers, and management both in person and over the internet or phone. They get their point across, let their opinions be heard, and know how important it is to listen to other ideas and concerns.
Critical thinking
Critical thinkers go past the surface level with problems or projects and come up with innovative solutions. They do this by understanding and addressing situations based on all information and facts provided creating links between the issues or ideas. Critical thinkers think clearly and rationally. They work logically and objectively through problems finding ways to effectively resolve any issue they come across. They are a valued member of any team.
Looking out for soft skills in candidates is vital in the recruitment process, they have a big impact on the success of the company and their future work performance.
Technical skills are still important however what makes or breaks a candidate is the soft skills. Remember that technical skills can be taught fairly easily, however, soft skills are much harder to learn and can be extremely time-consuming to practice and master, in turn not being very beneficial for your company. In many cases, candidates that have lacked education and experience have excelled in the workplace due to having a strong work ethic, good interpersonal skills, problem skills, and attitude.
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