Checking soft skills early in the recruiting process – just a „nice to have“?
Every recruiter knows the problem: time and again, the candidate with the perfect CV is not the most suitable candidate for the job. “Suitable” means: a person whose typical behavior matches with the job requirements and whose personality fits with the team.
Poorly fitting soft skills lead to expensive wrong hires, not just in management positions but everywhere in the organization, especially when the relationship side of a team shows dysfunctional symptoms.
Our behavior as human beings results from deeply rooted personality dimensions and is thus difficult to change. Do you remember how hard it can be to change an old habit and the beliefs that are attached to it? This is another reason why we should put an eye on the preferred behavior patterns of candidates.
However, the reality is often very different: Still today, many organizations focus first and singlemindedly on the fit between CV and job requirements. Only at the end of the hiring – in interviews or assessments – they eventually take a closer look at the human side.
In many recruitings, after a round of disappointing interviews, the hiring manager returns back to the initial pool of names to find another applicant. What a waste of time and resources, and how frustrating from a human point of view!
Checking soft skills early in the recruiting dramatically enhances chances of identifying a well-fitting candidate and also reduces time to hire. And the good news is: a standardized soft-skill screening is easy to implement, thanks to latest technologies. Say goodbye to elefantastic IT-implementation projects!
Employer Branding creates tangible value for the candidate
Soft-skill recruiting not only improves quality and speed of hiring. It also creates a new and different candidate experience which leads to a concrete and real benefit in terms of Employer Branding.
The old way is to use a technocratic ATS-system for uploading CVs filled with hard factor evidence through an often times complicated platform. The new way is to offer the candidate an easy-to-use and pleasant (or even fun) access point for applying, and even though it is still an electronic platform: it puts the human side of the candidate in the center of the process.
In a way, you can describe it as a digital mini-assessment where candidates create a description of their thinking and communication styles. As a result, you get an understanding of the preferences and habits that drive the way we think, take decisions and interact with others. And all candidates automatically receive the results of the screening summarized in a short and easy-to-understand personality profile.
Imagine how you feel as a candidate when you not only get the usual “Thank you for applying…” confirmation mail but a report indicating the strong and weak aspects of the fit between you and the job and allows you to have a realistic look at your preferred communication patterns. Quite a different message for a candidate, even if she/he doesn’t get the job in the end, isn’t it?
Employers can thus create a win-win situation with a double benefit: They receive candidate profiles that are more meaningful than just the CV and, at the same time, they create a positive image towards candidates by offering them a better value from the application.
Professional soft-skill screening – based on clear and thorough job profiles
If you want to benefit from such a win-win situation (after all, a successful hiring is nothing else but a win-win situation, isn’t it?), you have to start at the beginning: a clear and thorough job profile.
Take a look at a typical job description: A list of detailed and well-written tasks and responsibilities, but when it comes to personality- or behavior-related qualities the language becomes vague and general, pop psychology-like and the words become exchangeable (for example, think of the word “team player”!).
The challenge is to bring the job to life: What kind of human being would you like to see on this job? Somebody delivering thorough research results or somebody keeping a strategic look at things? What special skills do you want a new member to add to an existing team? These are examples of specific attributes which define a “team player”. And this is the language you need in a meaningful job profile.
If you think that writing such a job profile must be a complicated and time-consuming task, think again: softfactors has a job library full of templates, based on 26 competencies and more than 100 behaviors. Writing a job profile becomes fast and easy, and the result is the foundation of soft-skill screening.
Your choice: Be a CV broker or a recruiter with human touch!
Give it a try and check us out: We invite you to experience the softfactors recruiting suite from a candidate’s perspective. Get to know our field-tested instruments which offer a fast and reliable first check of hard factors and soft skills, leading to an impactful screening of candidates.