This LinkedIn Recruiter's Tips For Showcasing Soft Skills On Job Interviews
"It's more
about who you are than what you do," one LinkedIn insider explains.
If you've heard a lot about "soft skills" lately, it's
at least partly because employers want you to develop them. According to our
Global Recruiting Trends study here at LinkedIn, more employers are rolling out
"soft skills assessments" to test job candidates on the cognitive and
personality qualities you don't go to school to learn: critical thinking,
adaptability, learning agility, communication, etc. By all indications, these
factors are trading at a higher value in
2017 than they have in the past.
Come to each interview
armed with anecdotes about how you reacted to a major change.
But since they seem to be in high demand and comparatively short
supply, companies are investing in new technologies meant to zoom in on the
right folks faster. Here's what it takes to earn high marks in the job market
for your soft skills, whether you face one of those new assessment tools or a
flesh-and-blood hiring manager on a job interview.
While some employers still
use traditional interview questions to
assess soft skills, others are turning to predictive hiring software. Berke, for instance,
is a hiring tool that evaluates job applications according to a position's job
description and tries to determine which personality traits would boost their
performance in the role. Another tool, Koru (to which I'm an adviser, in full
disclosure), looks at companies' current teams and aims to gauge the
soft-skills makeup of their star players.
The companies that are
already experimenting with this kind of tech aren't doing so behind closed
doors—they want candidates to know about it, and prep accordingly. Many of
these platforms and programs post tips and advice to their websites to help job
seekers get a better idea of how to succeed. Koru outlines seven key traits it's built to look
for in most new hires. The first one is "grit, the ability to stick with
it when things get hard."
So to prepare, don't hesitate to ask an HR contact inside the
company whether they're using any predictive tools to help them evaluate job
candidates. If you learn that they are, do a little research on the technology
you may have to face, so you can show yourself off in the best light.
If you handle change well, companies are likely to prefer you to
someone who has a PhD or 10 years of experience but isn't as adaptable.
Have you been on board during a time when your company switched
from a hardware model to a software model? From a product to a service? How did
you respond? Maybe you transitioned off a team led by your favorite manager and
joined an unfamiliar group. What was that like? You should plan to come to each
interview armed with anecdotes about how you reacted to a major change, how you
came to make a big decision, and how your coworkers might describe your team
interactions.
At LinkedIn, we’ve interviewed people who are the best at their
craft, but if they lack the adaptability to work through change, we don’t hire
them. There’s no debate.
As more companies recognize the importance of soft skills, they're
becoming more interested in figuring out how candidates will respond to certain
scenarios. That means your job interviews over the next few years may hold more
surprises than they used to. A company might even stage a miniature crisis in
order to observe how candidates respond in the moment. Short of that, employers
are already retooling their go-to set of interview questions in order to shift
toward soft skills.
If you handle change
well, companies are likely to prefer you to someone who has a PhD or 10 years
of experience but isn't as adaptable.
This means candidates need
to rethink how they prepare for interviews. Canned answers may work even worse
than they did in the past—it's all about rolling with the punches. For now,
check out the most common interview
questions employers are using these days to tease out soft skills, and
start working on your answers.
Be honest with yourself: What would happen if you went into work
tomorrow and your manager said, "We’re shutting down XYZ project and we
don’t know what’s next"? This happens all the time.
Finding yourself in a situation like this can take a toll on your
health and happiness—that is, if you aren't comfortable adapting to unforeseen
changes. On the other hand, if you're someone with what recruiters think of as
high "change agility," make sure to find a place on the bleeding edge
of it. At all events, just be honest with yourself.
If adapting quickly to upheavals is hard for you, that’s okay too,
as long as you're aware of it and don't try to become someone you're not
(interviewers—and their growing set of tech tools—will be able to tell). Chances
are you have other soft skills employers are looking for; double down on those
and look for roles that are more suited to your abilities.
Employers like us still want to hear about your achievements, of
course, but you’ll also need to be ready to share experiences that demonstrate
how you’ve been able to adapt, persevere, and manage change. That’s the kind of
candidate companies will be looking to hire in the months and years ahead.
BRENDAN BROWNE
https://www.fastcompany.com/3067657/career-evolution/this-linkedin-recruiters-tips-for-showcasing-soft-skills-on-job-interviews?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-weekly-newsletter&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=02032017
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