Uncovering Soft Skills

Essentially soft skills are anything beyond the technical skills needed to perform a job. They fall primarily under the categories of communication and relational skills. Communication skills include active listening, writing, and speaking, while relational skills are adaptability, a respectful attitude, problem-solving, common sense, and the ability to make decisions.

Demonstrating your soft skills throughout the interview process is important, as they are as essential to successfully doing your job as your technical abilities. How do you showcase your communication and relational skills during the interview? There are several strategies you can use to help demonstrate your soft skills during the interview phase.

Assess your skills

You should have an idea of what soft skills are, how you define them, and why they matter. If it is important to your employer to find someone with particular soft skills, it should also be important to you. In addition, an environment that values these skills and helps you develop them will be valuable for your career growth.

In preparation for your interview:

• Think about which skills you have—outside of your technical skills—and how they might be useful in the job for which you are interviewing.
• Make a list of these communication and relational skills.
• Think about times when you’ve used them on the job, why it was necessary for you to use them, and how they helped you do your work or function in your work environment better.

You do not need to have every soft skill, but you should be able to identify which skills you have and cite examples of times you used them in past roles.

Be prepared to answer open-ended questions

Open-ended questions directly test some soft skills—like adaptability, and the ability to communicate effectively—but more importantly they give you the opportunity to reveal the skills you have or would use in particular circumstances.

There are several kinds of questions that employers will ask in order to draw out soft skills. You should be prepared to answer these in a way that best highlights your skills.

Tell me about yourself, and general questions about your interests and hobbies.
Employers often begin with something like, ‘tell me about yourself.’ This question is a terrific opportunity to take charge of the interview and talk about your strengths, qualifications, and why you’d be good at the job while also expressing who you are personally and professionally to your interviewer.

You should also be prepared to answer a more pointed, challenging question, like ‘what would you improve about yourself, professionally, and personally?’

Tell me about a time when…
This type of questioning has grown in popularity as it is a good tool for drawing out an individual’s communication and relational skills. It asks you to talk about your past experiences and give examples of your soft skills in action.

Interviewers want to know how you’ll manage a challenging situation or how you’ll deal with a difficult coworker; most importantly, they want to see how you work within a professional environment. A story about a time when you used a skill like adaptability or problem-solving can be used to answer a variety of questions, so prepare a few of these before your interview.

Responding to ‘what if’ scenarios.
Rather than drawing from past experiences, ‘what if’ questions ask you to envision working at the company and predict how you would respond to or handle a situation. Your interviewer may create a scenario he thinks would provoke someone’s emotions and let you describe how you would respond to it. You will need to process this question in the moment, and while you can practice and prepare for this type of question, you will most likely need to be able to think on the spot and figure out how you would react to the given scenario.

If you are lacking experience in one area, take advantage of the opportunity to use this scenario to unveil your potential. Be honest, but if you can approach the situation knowledgeably, even when it is a scenario with which you are less familiar, you can really impress your interviewer.

Speak directly about soft skills.
You might be asked something like, ‘What soft skills do you have, and how do they help you do your job well?’ Your interviewer wants to discover if you know what soft skills are, if you think they are important, and if you are aware of the communication and relational skills you possess and how to use them. Once again, you have the opportunity to impress in this situation—take advantage of it by being prepared.

Show your soft skills

In the coming years, soft skills will continue to become increasingly important. In most cases, IT professionals are actively involved in business, interacting and collaborating on a daily basis with other business units. Companies that interview for and value soft skills now will ensure they have a strong IT department in the future.

As a top-notch IT Pro, take advantage of the single best opportunity for you to convince someone of your soft skills and be prepared to demonstrate your communication and relational skills during your interview.