Soft Skills reposition people at the heart of any company’s recruitment strategy. Faced with widespread digitalisation, it can feel reassuring to place more importance on a candidates’ technical knowledge and professional experience. Yet, Soft Skills contribute to performance by enriching a company’s human capital. Soft Skills also strengthen the internal cohesion of teams, enabling them to better meet objectives. This is why it is essential to include them in “candidate personas” as well as in recruitment criteria.
Soft Skills to overcome changes yet to come
Why do recruiters praise Soft Skills? They provide employer’s a guarantee for adapting to the increasingly uncertain and competitive external environment.
On one hand, job-specific knowledge has an ever-shortening shelf life – as technological progress accelerates the obsolescence of more and more tasks. Specific technical skills in particular, which are negatively impacted by these changes, require update and entire replacement on a regular basis. Although today most can agree that it is possible to continue learning throughout life, it requires certain soft skills to facilitate the apprenticeships and acquisition of skills. For example, openness and flexibility allow people to break away from the narrow vision of their profession and acquire new skills. When recruiting for a position impacted by transformations in business, it is essential to identify these qualities.
On the other hand, with the rise of a more project-based style of work, we need to remember to surround ourselves with skills (and the talent who possess them) that correspond to an increasingly agile way of working. To be effective and avoid the need to outsource to consultants at every turn, having an adaptive management style that accommodates the needs of each individual is necessary. This approach certainly reduces costs, as well as it places employees and human resources functions at the heart of business transformation. Before any recruitment process commences, HR or Talent Acquisition need to have a thorough understanding of both the skills that enable an individual to be successful in the job, as well as the ability to understand if the candidate will adapt to well to future changes.
Recruitment provides a boost to business transformation
Knowing the specific soft skills required for a role and integrating them into the candidate profile being researched ensures a match between the new recruit and the company’s business objectives.
It is up to you to identify and select the specific Soft Skills that best suit your unique situation. What are your challenges to overcome? and what behavioural skills will aid in this? What relational difficulties do your employees experience on a daily basis? What motivators would improve the efficiency of your teams?
Complex problems can be solved with creativity, helping to resolve difficult work situations. Managers with these Soft Skills are better able to approach these obstacles: finding new and novel solutions. They are also able to help develop and nurture these qualities among their teams, as they will need to demonstrate this cognitive flexibility as well. Obviously when collaborating on a project, there is a necessary fluidity and efficiency required between the individuals, each coming from different backgrounds and different experiences. The ability to make decisions and negotiate also come into play in a world of work where positions are bound to change rapidly. An employee may find themselves at the head of a project due to their expertise, but this situation also requires them to possess the Soft Skills related to leadership, for example, in order to succeed.
Communication, teamwork and human-centric problem solving are skills that cannot be delegated and performed by machines, unlike many technical skills. To put this into context, as the transformations that many businesses must undergo will disrupt a large cross section of their workforce, soft skills provide an advantage to the Talent who possess them, as well as the companies who employ them.
It is worth noting, though, that focusing on Soft Skills-based recruitment is not enough; it is also necessary to integrate soft skill assessment and development for the Talent already in the company – especially when we consider Internal Mobility. How about starting with a personality test? We must realise that soft skills can be learned and developed, especially if employees recognise their value! Recruitment needs to make place for Soft Skills, but it cannot be solely responsible for enhancing human capital. Once talent with desired soft skills is acquired, developing the soft skills of that talent is ultimately what is critical for the sustainability of the business.
